Audiobooks with Don review: ISOLA

Isola by Allegra Goodman is based on a true story. Marguerite de la Rocque de Roberval was a 16th-century French noblewoman who was abandoned on a remote island in the Bay of St. Lawrence off of what is now Canada . Her guardian took Marguerite and her maid along on a voyage to colonize the land for the French crown but when he discovered her secret love affair, he marooned the three, (Marguerite. the maid, and the lover) on the Isle of Demons in 1542. Marguerite was the sole survivor, eventually being rescued by Basque fishermen two years later. The author, Allegra Goodman was able to find two separate 16th century accounts of her tale of resilience, betrayal, and survival, one written by the king's sister, Queen Marguerite de Navarre, and published, along with 72 other stories, in a book titled The Heptaméron.

The story begins at the beginning of Marguerite's life with the death of her mother. Later her father dies in battle, fighting for the crown. Marguerite is assigned a guardian until she can marry and then her estate will become hers. Unfortunately for Marguerite women of the day have very few rights and her guardian sells off her assets to finance his sea explorations. Eventually she has nowhere to live, as her home is sold and now she is totally at the mercy of her guardian's will. She begged to stay in France but he decides to take her with him when he travels to the east coast of North America (New France)  to help him make a name for himself by establishing a colony there.  The author didn't have many details to fill out the story so she took creative licence with it, imagining what life was like for women of the day and what survival required on a remote island with few resources. Selected for the Reese Witherspoon Book Club, Isola is a timeless tale of survival against all odds.

Two years ago I read Maggie O'Farrell's book, The Marriage Portrait. It is also about a real 16th century woman (girl, really), Lucrezia di Cosimo de'Medici. Less is known about this woman than of Marguerite, but it is thought she was poisoned by an unloving, older husband. As I read both books, I seethed with 21st-century indignation that women were treated so poorly by men in that time period and wondered at how noblewomen could stand to put up with the constraints placed on them by society. My thoughts doubled back to the Marriage Portrait as I read Isola. Obviously things have improved for women since that time but even today some men want women to just shut up and go back to what they do best -- having babies -- and leave all the important stuff for men to handle without them. Ugh.

Don and I listened to the audiobook, read by Fiona Hardingham. Both of us were tremendously fascinated by the fictional version of a true-tale. How could someone be so awful as to maroon a woman on a tiny island off the coast of Canada in 1542 with few provisions and no mercy, we both thought? But we became pretty impatient with the story that led up to those events -- Marguerite's life up to that point as a noblewoman living in a corner of her family's castle, under the guardianship of such a tyrant -- and it seemed to drag on and on. Even though we bumped up the listening speed to 1.25, we were still impatient with the story to get on with it. At the point where Don was just about ready to give up on the book, the marooning occured and then the story became fairly interesting as a survival story. Don confessed he liked the book better going forward, ultimately rating it with 3.5 stars. My rating wasn't much better -- 3.75 stars, rounded up to 4 stars. I don't think either of us were upset having listened to the book and it did give us some interesting things to talk about --- Don mentioned religion, customs, and exploration; I was fixated on the poor treatment of women. And now, almost a month after finishing Isola, I realize that the story has stuck with me. I think of it all the time, especially the details of what it was like to be marooned on an island in the middle of big, cold bay. I know, if it had been me, I wouldn't have survived. I guess the women of the 16th-century had that going for them.

-Anne