Lucy Irvine — Castaway with Francesca Segal

When Lucy Irvine answered a classified ad to play Girl Friday to a real-life Robinson Crusoe on a remote tropical island, she embarked on an enthralling—and at times harrowing—year-long adventure. The result was her bestselling 1983 memoir, Castaway, a beautifully-written tale of survival. We’re diving into Irvine’s unforgettable story with special guest Francesca Segal, whose own island-centric novel, Welcome to Glorious Tuga, was recently optioned for TV by See-Saw Films.

Mentioned in this episode:

Castaway by Lucy Irvine

The Lucy Irvine Foundation

Welcome to Glorgious Tuga by Francesca Segal

Runaway and Faraway by Lucy Irvine

The Islander by Gerald Kingsland

The Secret Life of a Schoolgirl by Rosemary Kingsland

Castaway 1986 film trailer starring Amanda Donohoe and Oliver Reed

Wild by Cheryl Strayed

“Alone” on the History Channel

See-Saw Films

One is One by Lucy Irvine

The Innocents by Francesca Segal

Transcript

This transcript is auto-generated; please pardon typographical errors.

AMY HELMES: Thank you for listening to Lost Ladies of Lit. For access to all of our future bonus episodes and to help support the cause of recovering forgotten women writers join our Patreon community. Visit lost ladiesof lit.com and click “Become a Patron” to find out more. 

KIM ASKEW: Welcome to Lost Ladies of Lit, the podcast dedicated to forgotten women writers. I'm Kim Askew here with my co-host Amy Helmes. Today's featured book, Castaway by Lucy Irvine, could be described as a female Robinson Crusoe. 

AMY: In this case, however, it's a true tale. I am so excited about this 1983 memoir. Kim, I think you know this about me (this is a rare case where our reading interests diverge) but I actually love nonfiction survival memoirs, you know, books about people's time alone in the wilderness. Whether it's the Donner Party or some arctic explorer, somebody trudging through a deadly jungle. I will read all of these books whenever I come across them. 

KIM: That is hilarious because you are not very outdoorsy. Neither of us are. Um, so you would never actually do any of those things.

AMY: No, not at all. I think that's why I love them. I can sit from the comfort of my couch with a bag of chips and just read about someone else’s hardships (and the more harrowing the better, by the way.) So I don't know what that says about me. Pretty sadistic I guess. But for as many of these types of books as I've read, I can't necessarily think of too many that were written by women. There is Cheryl Strayed's Wild, but I don't quite count that because I need my adventures to be so far from civilization. Far from help that really ups the stakes in the same vein, I love that TV series on the history channel “Alone,” but those participants also have kind of the ability to tap out with a satellite phone when things get too dire, 

KIM: Right. But in contrast, today's last lady opted to maroon herself on a tropical island for one year — do-or-die, there's no tapping out — with only one other human (in fact a complete stranger) just to test her mettle. 

AMY: And no, the stranger is not a volleyball named Wilson. 

KIM: Wilson might have been more useful, honestly.

AMY: Yeah, it's true. 

KIM: Anyway, it's a wild story in every sense of the word. And Amy, I'll admit, I kind of expected that Irvine's written account of this adventure would be big on drama, but possibly short on literary merit. I was completely wrong about that second part. The writing in this memoir is beautiful.

AMY: Absolutely. And it sparked in me that old, familiar feeling we get on this podcast. How had I never heard of this book? Castaway was a bestseller in its day, and it was also made into a film in 1987. Now Lucy Irvine who wrote it, she's British, so I'm wondering if maybe more people in the UK are familiar with her? Because she wrote two follow ups to Castaway.

KIM: Well, we have a British guest on hand who has, herself, written about island life, so maybe we should introduce her and dive in. 

AMY: Okay. I can already feel the sand between my bare toes. Let's raid the stacks and get started!

[intro music plays]

KIM: Our guest today, Francesca Segal, is an author and journalist whose debut 2012 novel The Innocents won the UK's Costa Book Award for first novel. In Francesca's most recent novel. Welcome to Glorious Tuga, a British veterinarian trades her comfortable London life for a remote south Atlantic island where she finds both delight and drama amidst a quirky cast of characters. The book was actually optioned for TV by Seesaw, the same production company behind “Heartbreaker” and “Slow Horses.” Um, wow. That sounds like a pinch-me-please development if there ever was one. Francesca, we'd love to welcome you to the show!

FRANCESCA SEGAL: Thank you so much for having me. It is such a total pleasure to be here.

AMY: I love when we get to find “lost ladies of lit” in roundabout ways, and that's the case with this book, Lucy Irvine's Castaway. Francesca, we knew we wanted you to join us, and so I was hunting around online, hoping to find some other sort of island themed novel to pair up with Welcome to Glorious Tuga. I did not anticipate finding a memoir, but once I started looking into this book, I was so intrigued by the premise. And turns out there are a lot more parallels between Lucy Irvine and your fictional heroine than I initially realized. Had you heard of Castaway before? 

FRANCESCA: You know, it's funny when you were talking earlier about whether this was bigger in the UK, I was thinking, you know, I remember something about this book. I hadn't read it. Um, you know, I was young in the Eighties, but when you suggested it, I was like, “Oh, that book.” And then when I mentioned it to a friend who's also a novelist, she described curling up with this book as a teenager, just absolutely rapt with it. And then I had the same conversation over and over with a couple of girlfriends. So I think this landed with a lot of like 14-year-old girls in the UK, which you can really… reading it, you can really imagine, for better or worse, but we'll get to some of that. 

KIM: Oh yeah, completely. So what makes Castaway such a fascinating read is that the fickle whims of Mother Nature aren't the only obstacles she has to contend with. Francesca, can you tell our listeners about this unusual arrangement that leads her to the deserted island in the first place? It's kind of fascinating. 

FRANCESCA: Yes, so it's amazing that we have this book from Lucy Irvine because the genesis of this whole island adventure was that another writer, a man, Gerald Kingsland, advertised for a “wife” to come and live with him for a year on a remote desert island in this kind of like “Robinson Crusoe”-style, survival mode. And an unbelievable number of women answered this advert, from whom he selected Lucy, who was more than 20 years his junior, I think. And for kind of various bureaucratic reasons they legally married and then launched into this madcap scheme. 

AMY: Yeah, it was completely whirlwind. And I think on Lucy's part, really impulsive, right? You almost get the sense she needed to run away or she needed to escape. I don't know. Um, but this idea of getting to go to this island, it's a place called Tuin, which is in the Torres Strait between New Zealand and Australia (and actually I read that Captain James Cook called the islands in the Torres Strait “the unhappiest place” on earth). So it's not very conducive to life, necessarily. But yeah, I did see the similarities between her decision to answer this classified ad, run off with this stranger who she basically knew for a matter of weeks it almost seems like… and then the character in your book, Charlotte, the narrator, who also feels like “I've gotta do something to shake up my life.” Right? 

FRANCESCA: Right. Well, I mean in comparison to Castaway and Tuin my tiny island is, you know, is Manhattan. But yeah, Charlotte is an academic vet from London studying newts in the kind of safe comfort of the zoo in Regents Park. And she goes for a year, she takes up a fellowship to move to this tiny remote tropical island with a very, very small, very close-knit community. Um, some of it is because she's a conservationist and there's a small population of very rare tortoises in the interior who are deserving of her study. But some of it is also for, as you said, personal reasons of her own that she is running to to solve a mystery. 

AMY: In your book, Francesca, your main character, you know, she has a similar “annoyed at first sight” interaction with a man that she meets when she lands on Tuga. In Lucy's case though, you don't get the sense that this guy is gonna suddenly turn into Mr. Darcy by the end. He's pretty abrasive. 

FRANCESCA: I found him unbelievably unsympathetic in this book. I mean, he is expecting her to be a wife in every sense, regardless of the kind of bureaucratic reasons behind their decision to marry. He is very much expecting her duties to extend to the bedroom, and it's very uncomfortable reading. I mean, obviously this book was written in 1983 when expectations perhaps were slightly different, but it's uncomfortable reading not only because he is so vile — relentlessly vile, but actually also I found Lucy's interpretation of her own reactions to him quite upsetting as well, because she quite often says, particularly at the beginning, well, you know, “Maybe I was being frigid? Maybe I was holding out on him?” and she's quite sympathetic to him in a way that I, as a reader, certainly was not. 

AMY: So a little bit of backstory that I think helps because it is very complicated. But when she first answered the ad, they did have sex. 

FRANCESCA: Yes. 

AMY: They were intimate. And so they had to get married for legal reasons to be able to go onto this island together. And she was mad about having to get married. She thought this is going a step too far, but we're already in it. So I guess I'll go ahead. And at that point she said. “I'm not gonna have sex with you anymore.” She basically said that right when they landed on the island, pretty much. And so it took him by surprise because he thought, I've got this hot girl (and she was hot, if you've seen pictures).

FRANCESCA: Oh, yes.

AMY: Yeah. So he's got this hot girl that had already agreed to sleep with him, and then suddenly they land on the island and she's like, yep, change my mind about that. So I think she does have a sense of, did I, you know. bait and switch?

FRANCESCA: But the way he speaks to her, oh, and the names he calls her and the, I don't know. I mean, I'm perhaps bringing an anachronistic reaction to it, but you know, if she says, “No,” my friend, it's, no. I really found him repellent.

KIM: I had a quote that I highlighted, she said “Later I was to discover how profound an effect being called the “C” word for a year had on my feelings of worth as a woman, because it was all I could really be to G. In the end, I felt it was all I really was.” 

AMY: Mm. 

KIM: Yeah. 

AMY: And it's complicated because she also knows I'm stuck on the island with this guy for a year. I have to find a way to make this work. So she is very much about keeping the peace, keeping him happy in a weird like kind of “Little Missus” way. You know, even though she's not having sex, she definitely takes on the role of like, I will do the wifely thing. 

KIM: While also doing all the other stuff too! 

AMY: She was doing everything. That's a good point. 

FRANCESCA:: She's doing everything! I mean, 'cause that's the thing is that they get there and he's this big survivalist and he's done it a million times before and then within about five minutes he's lying on a green towel doing nothing. 

AMY: He just wants his siestas. 

FRANCESCA: Yes. It's so irritating. He's meant to be building this shelter for when the rains come and he's doing nothing!

AMY: And she's got like military level organization like, “this is what we need to be doing today.” You know, “the rains are gonna come. We need to get the shelter.” And she starts ordering him around and he does not like getting ordered around by her either. 

KIM: He resents it. Completely. 

AMY: Yeah. That's why I love this book, because if you're not into wilderness survival, it doesn't matter because this is a story about interpersonal dynamics. That's what makes this book so fascinating. 

KIM: Completely. In a crucible. Yeah. 

AMY: Yeah. And so they have to sleep in a tent together. They're wandering around naked pretty much because it doesn't make any sense to wear clothes. So it's an unusual situation, but it seems like throughout the book, what she's more interested in is her relationship to this island. That's why she's here. She's here to be an adventure, and it almost seems like the book is a love story between her and the land, wouldn't you say? 

KIM: Oh yeah. Yeah. She definitely is happiest when she's able to wander on her own around the island. She craves that time by herself to think and write in her diary, and it's very sensual, too.

AMY: She writes in her memoir. The island had me like a lover. I was totally captivated by the very indifference of its charm, aware always that my soft body was the alien, but as it toughened and moved more naturally to the rhythm of Tuin-time, I felt that I was beginning to blend. What she writes in these like private moments on the island just wind up being so beautiful. 

FRANCESCA: And that's the irony of his interactions with her, also, because he was the writer and he was the one who was having this big adventure to feed this book, the advance for which paid for his flights to get there and everything else. But actually nobody is still reading his book and a great many people are (or should be) reading hers. And she is the one who is responding with this poetry in her soul. It comes alive on the island and with the island. 

AMY: Absolutely. And she knew the whole time that he's gonna be working on this memoir, and it's almost like she had to keep reminding him: “Maybe you should work on your memoir?” Like he was so lazy.

KIM: Yes, totally. Her other wifely duty was nicely nagging him about his book. 

FRANCESCA: Yeah. Yeah. And making endless cups of tea. Like, the British commitment to the cup of tea when there's like almost nothing else on this island, and they have about 27 cups of hot tea a day. Yeah. 

AMY: And getting back to the island itself, Francesca, I'm curious about your thoughts on what makes an island setting so impactful in terms of storytelling, whether it's real life or fiction, in the case of your novel. 

FRANCESCA: I think for me there was some powerful wish fulfillment in writing this novel because the island of my novel I've created and I wanted to come to my desk with joy every day and be in a place of community and warmth and hope. And where can I go? Well, I can go to this other place that's so remote. It has this timeless feel to it. And you can only get there by cargo ship. Nobody has a cell phone. And this island just came to life, this tropical island that is a British overseas territory, (not a colony, to be very clear) with values I respected and a collectivist culture and a place of hope really for me and for readers. Um, and the isolation, I think. 

AMY: Yeah, I mean, you have a scene in your novel where the boat leaves Charlotte. I think Lucy has that same moment in her memoir where it's like, “Okay, there's no more, no more saving me. It's me here now.” You know? 

FRANCESCA: That's the novelist's gift, right? And it's the like human being's nightmare. I mean, unless you're a very particular type of human being, like Lucy Irvine. And actually I'm left reading this book with more questions than answers in some ways. Like she has got a degree of survivalist competence that is completely unexplained. The fishing and building and schlepping and hauling and climbing is unreal. I mean, if you put me on her island, I would die. I'd be dead in 72 hours. 

KIM: Yeah, you could see thinking, “Oh, that's a good idea.” And then you land there and you're like, “Wow, this was the biggest mistake of my life.” But instead it perfect for her. 

FRANCESCA: Yes! 

KIM: The percentage of people could do that…

FRANCESCA: Yes. It's like this was what she was born to do and there's not really any understanding that I've come away with of how she came to be the person who was so better suited to this than he was.

AMY: Well, but I think she did have that kind of crazy childhood where she's, you know, I think she ran away from home a time or two. She was always doing crazy odd jobs. She just had a very interesting and unusual childhood that I think kind of set her up for something like this where she was almost left to her own devices in some ways.

FRANCESCA: Yeah. I think her parents ran a hotel, didn't they? Quite a remote hotel, and she was at boarding school and she ran away a couple of times, like just to see, and then basically left school at 13 and never had any formal education after the age of 13. And she'd been a cleaner and she'd been a monkey keeper. But none of that accounts for me as to her instinctive response to this island. Um, but yes, she's definitely a very independent person from very early on. 

AMY: So these early days on the island, Gerald, who she calls “G.” in the book, he's just loafing around not getting anything done. So it's, it's all kind of on her. I mean, to be fair, he does come down with a very painful skin infection that affects his legs, but she is kind of just figuring her shit out. You know, they came with a few provisions, but not very much. They didn't want the comforts of home. 

FRANCESCA: Well, 'cause he'd come with all these seeds and he was gonna plant them a garden that was gonna keep them fed for the year. And obviously none of that happened. I mean, some of that's not his fault. Some of that was to do with the fact that water was very scarce at the beginning. But I mean, his garden project is woeful. But it's interesting because her commitment to this project is extraordinary and very literal. Like they get there and someone who has used the island in some way as a base or has lived there temporarily before them, has put this like corrugated iron shed up. Just literally a shed. Quite very small. And that's where they dump their possessions when they first arrive, because that's the obvious place to put it. And she feels like they're cheating. She has this almost visceral reaction to the shed, and they could not be more isolated and they could not be more independent. But no, she wants the letter of the law. She doesn't want someone else's tiny piece of tin. 

KIM: That's completely amazing. Yeah. Um, you talked about his skin infection, Amy. So this whole idea of scarcity and precariousness of healthcare on the island, it factors into the plot of your book, too. So I can imagine Lucy and G's medical maladies throughout the book might have struck a chord with you in that sense?

FRANCESCA: Yeah, it's very interesting, as a writer, the things that one discovers over the years that one is obsessed with. And for me through novels and nonfiction, somehow it's always women's healthcare. As soon as I start thinking about a very remote isolated, impoverished island, the next thought I have is, well, “Who's taking care of the women?” Because the medical system wouldn't have noticed them, or somehow they wouldn't have had the facilities or the wherewithal or the insight, um, to take care of women's needs. And so that for me was a really interesting plot. So it's where my mind goes instantly. Um, and so that's a strong thread in my book is the medical care. Yes. My main character is a vet, but also on the boat, coming back with her, is the new doctor who is an islander but has been living in England for 15 years and is coming back finally to assume his new role as head of island healthcare. And that was always gonna be for me, a really important part of the plot.

AMY: The problem when you're on an island is your resources are limited. They're finite, right? You know, you can't have every drug available. Lucy and G have a couple of Band-aids. That's what they have to work with. 

FRANCESCA: And she uses them to patch the roof!

AMY: Yes, you're right. You're right. Yeah. And so she's constantly improvising and trying to adapt and jimmyr-rig things with what they have. Gradually over time, she learns that they need to work with nature instead of trying to fight it. She writes in her memoir: Gradually, within and beyond the banalities of routine, the rhythm of Tuin established itself. Sun, moon and tide wielded an implacable baton conducting our every move, dictating to us when it was time to fish, time to labor, and time to rest. And yet, within the metronomic strictures of heat and night and day, we were free to flounder or flourish. To survive, one must conform. When the pattern of conformity is set, then you can see where your freedom lies. 

Her introspection is amazing. Just that idea of surrendering to everything she was dealing with on the island; G and all his tantrums, you know, the struggle to survive. And she also just had this joy and cheerfulness the whole time. Sometimes I would think of her as like a Disney princess because G. would be over here throwing a tantrum and she would still somehow have this like chipper attitude about everything. 

FRANCESCA: I think I responded to something similar. So this is from her diary.

What is it that makes the texture of the grass so different from one patch to another near camp? It's like flattened straw these days over near the scrub though beyond Long Beach it's thick where it bleaches and it's not blonde, but blue. Here it's dry, but so fine that there's softness. I like to lie stretched out on my side and let the heat melt all inner and outer tension so that I don't even flinch when an ant crawls in my ear. He'll crawl out again. 

AMY: Hmm. 

FRANCESCA: I mean, it's like very zen. She's just 

AMY: She’s like a wild nature girl.

FRANCESCA: Yeah. “He'll crawl out again!” I mean, it makes perfect sense, but also, uggh!

KIM: She's very at peace with herself. Like you feel like she could be alone if G. wasn't there and she would be fine. And maybe better. 

FRANCESCA: Yeah, better. Exactly. I was gonna say there are moments where you feel like maybe better. 

KIM: There's a section where she details the different meals she cooked based on the food she could source, which I thought was pretty interesting. And she gets really inventive. Obviously food is gonna be at the forefront of her mind, right, Francesca?

FRANCESCA: Yeah, I mean, the food is amazing. It goes back to what you were saying earlier about her going as in this traditional wifely figure because as far as I can tell, G. prepares no meals for a year. That is her domain and responsibility, and she takes tremendous pride in making these extraordinary, you know, mashing things into other things. And if she gets half of a something, it gets segmented between them and, you know, going on an unbelievable hike to where the giant pythons are because there might be a mango tree, possibly, in that direction. And you really do feel how important the food is to them and how great it tastes when they do find things.

KIM: Yeah, there's a great excerpt from her diary where she talks about this passion fruit: The tiny pale orange fruit looked so delicate against the armadillo-rough bark of pandayas, like thin eggshells against dark wood. I would love a boiled egg right now. Two with toast. Perhaps I can find a scrub fowl's egg. Some flowering vines to the right looked promising, but the fruit was yet too green to be good. I stepped over them, careful not to cause any damage, and made my way to a clearing where the sun could more easily penetrate the parasol of foliage. Here, one or two fruits were ready to eat, and I sucked out the sweet seeds as I moved among the vines. How I adore these tiny orange explosions of sweetness. First, I select the most deeply colored perfect specimens off the vine. Pushing apart the soft cup of fronds surrounding each individual fruit and then poisoning it carefully before my lips between thumb and forefinger definitely pop the skin so that only the honey-scented seeds flow into my mouth.

I mean, it's pretty striking imagery there, right? 

AMY: You can sense how alive this whole experience makes her feel. She just is appreciating everything as if it's the first time she's experiencing it. 

KIM: And again, the sensuality there, too. Yeah. 

AMY: So a kind of turning point comes in the book, I guess it's probably around three-fourths of the way through their stay on the island when a visitor from the nearby island of Badu visits. And Badu is a little more populated. I would say almost a little bit more like Tuga from your novel. It's got a whole community of people over there. And when this visitor discovers that Gerald (G.) is a master at fixing boat engines and generators, it kind of augers the end of the couple's isolation on the island because the people of Badu start coming to them for G. to fix stuff. It also marks the end of their having to survive because these islanders start giving them provisions like flour and you know, honey, things like that, that are making their lives more comfortable. And back to what you were saying, Francesca, a little earlier about Lucy taking this quest so seriously, she almost doesn't like that this is happening. She's like, no, I don't want the comforts of home. She's thankful that they're bringing these gifts to her, and in truth, they really saved them because they were so malnourished at the point when they were discovered, but she feels like, no, this is cheating again. Right? 

FRANCESCA: It's interesting that she is resentful, but two things happen. One, they bring them water so they can actually stay alive and stay on the island. But the other thing is that because they're bringing Gerald these engines, he suddenly gets off his arse and starts doing something and he becomes nicer. He's still not my fave, I must say, but he is more tolerable because he feels like he has a purpose and his enormous male ego is somewhat managed by being given a task. I mean, there were many, many tasks he could have applied himself to prior to this, but he feels useful in the wider sense to these people who are bringing him things that they can't fix. And so things get better because they're no longer starving to death or dying of thirst. But also he becomes a modicum less intolerable.

AMY: Slightly more sufferable. Yes. 

FRANCESCA: Yes.The bar, as we said, is low. 

KIM: Totally low. Like would you want to spend a year on an island with Hemingway or something? 

AMY: He seems worse than Hemingway. But I wanna defend G. for a second. I know I'm a little more sympathetic to him.  

FRANCESCA: You are! You are very “Camp G.” I'm finding this very interesting.

AMY: But here's why. Let me show you on the screen. I got a copy of his book.

FRANCESCA: So did I!

AMY: Oh, okay! Alright. So, yeah, so I gave it a read because I wanted to see … there's two sides to every story, right? So his account of their time on two is called The Islander. It was published one year after Castaway came out. And if you're a subscriber to this podcast, I'm going to be reporting back in more detail on The Islander in next week's bonus episode and comparing it to Lucy's book. Um, I suspect that “recollections may vary” as Queen Elizabeth would say. But it was Gerald who actually encouraged Lucy to write her memoir. In his memoir he says, “you're a more brilliant writer than I am,” because she would be sharing some of her diary entries with him as they were together. And I still don't like him, and I think he has a giant ego, but I did find a new respect for him reading his book, which is nowhere near as well written. I wouldn't even recommend it. He just kind of writes what happens. She writes hers in this sublime, beautifully literate way. So I feel like I have a little more insight into Gerald having read his book. He doesn't refute what she says about him. You know, I, I also want to point out that before all of these events of Castaway took place, Gerald was married to another lost lady of lit. Her name was Rosemary Kingsland, and she had a very interesting life as well. So in addition to writing novels and screenplays, she was very famous (in Britain, especially) for writing a tell-all memoir about the affair she had with Richard Burton when she was 14 years old. So I'm sure a lot of people in the UK know about Rosemary Kingsland. She is the one that helped Gerald (they had been separated for a while, but they remained friends) and she helped him narrow down the candidates for the wife on Tuin. So just an interesting side note that there's another lost lady of lit. 

KIM: How old was Richard Burton at the time? Do you know? 

AMY: Uh, too old. Too old. Probably in his forties.

KIM: Oh my God. Yeah. Whoa. Lucy Irvine's adventures continued after the success of Castaway and she published two more memoirs, uh, Runaway, which is actually a prequel to Castaway. It talks about her remarkable childhood, her Bohemian life prior to this Tuin adventure and then Faraway, which recounts her later decision to relocate for a year to a remote island in the Solomons. And that was with her three sons that she eventually had. 

AMY: I don't know if we even mentioned, but before Lucy answered the classified ad to be the Tuin wife, she worked for the Internal Revenue Service. I mean, America's version is the IRS is where she was working. So she was doing the boring office job in London, basically, which I think is hilarious that she went from that to, like, naked on the island. She also wrote a novel later in life called One is One about a woman in a dysfunctional relationship. (I wonder where she got that idea?) Reviews online when I was checking that out seemed kind of mixed. I definitely think Castaway is the book you want to reach for first, and then, um, if you're in love with her writing, go on from there.

KIM: Okay. And so now at 69 years old, Lucy Irvine is living in Bulgaria currently, where she has dedicated her life to animal rescue through the Lucy Irvine Foundation. Her organization helps dogs, cats, and horses in poor areas of Bulgaria, providing the animals with food and veterinary treatments and safeguarding their futures by finding them loving homes. We will link to that organization in our show notes with more information on how you can donate. So yeah, there are pictures of her and her son was interviewed in The Guardian. So yeah, she's living and has an interesting life still. 

AMY: For sure. She has a very Jane Goodall vibe to her that I love. Like she still doesn't care about material possessions at all. In fact, her home burned down in Bulgaria a few years ago, I think, and she's just carried on. You know, I think she moved into a mobile home or whatever, but her priority is taking care of these animals and she has been battling health issues in recent years, but her advocacy for animals has not wavered. Her foundation is doing great work. 

KIM: I wanna hear about the film version 'cause I have not seen it. The 1986 film of Castaway, which stars? Amanda Donahoe and Oliver Reed as Gerald, what's the verdict? And Francesca, have you, have you seen it? 

FRANCESCA: I haven't. I wasn't sure how I felt about it. And again, I looked at some reviews and they were sort of mixed. Um, but now I dunno whether my curiosity might not get the better of me and I might not have to just check it out. What's your feedback? 

AMY: Save yourself. Save yourself. It is pretty unbearable. I do not recommend it as much as we love the cheesy cover. It definitely is cheesy, but it's just really hard to watch. It's not good. Um, Amanda Donahoe, I will say was terrifically cast because she looks almost exactly like Lucy Irvine, but there is so much 1980s saxophone music. I can't even deal with it! It makes no sense. Because you're on an island and there's sexy saxophone music! It was pure Eighties.

KIM: I'm thinking of Against All Odds!

AMY: Yeah. The whole memoir of Castaway definitely has a “will they or won't they?” tension about the whole sexual situation with G. They try to play that up a little bit. 

KIM: Because it's not romantic in the book. It's “will they or won't they? I hope she doesn't!” as opposed to like The Blue Lagoon or something. 

AMY: That's the problem. They were trying to make it like Blue Lagoon, but like… it's Gerald. I don't think it did the book justice, but I can see why it did get turned into a film because people were loving this memoir so much. Maybe somebody needs to make a new adaptation.

KIM: Yeah, that's better. Um, but speaking of adaptations, we do look forward to hopefully seeing a TV adaptation of Welcome to Glorious Tuga. Is there any further information you can spill on that or can you share what you're working on next or both? 

FRANCESCA: I can both a bit. Um, so Seesaw have got a screenwriter on it and she started, so that's very exciting. Um, and I've been having all sorts of funny conversations with them where I get these sort of random communications. I said I didn't want to be involved. 

KIM: That's probably better. 

FRANCESCA: Yeah, it's better. Um, but obviously I've done a huge amount of research and so very occasionally I'll get a, just a WhatsApp message saying, um “Who's the police officer?” or you know, something like that. Sort of really practical questions or like, “Can we be in touch with one of your vet contacts?” Because obviously I've done lots of very joyful research interviewing vets and herpetologists. Um, so that is moving along, which is very exciting. Um, and what I'm working on next is the sequel.

AMY: Oh, nice! It's gonna be part of a trilogy, right? 

FRANCESCA: It is. Yeah, and the sequel (Number Two) is out this year, so I'm now, what I'm working on is Number Three. But Number Two is imminent, which is exciting. 

AMY: And listeners, Francesca's book was kind of originally described to us as sort of the Durrells from My Family and Other Animals — kind of quirky characters who are living in a small community. It has very much the same vibe as that TV show, “The Durrells.” So it makes sense that there's gonna be more books coming out. Um, this is all so exciting. If you do have any notes for the producers of the TV series, maybe just say “no Eighties saxophone.” Just draw the line there. 

FRANCESCA: Yes, I will pass that on. No Eighties saxophone.

AMY: Proven not to work. Yeah. And I also wanna say there's another novel that kind of fits along the seam that I'm reading. Um, it's by Allegra Goodman, and I mentioned this in a bonus episode. It's called Isola. 

FRANCESCA: That’s on my bedside table now!

AMY: Are you kidding? Okay. Yes. So it's a true life. Story, but it's been fictionalized by Allegra Goodman about Marguerite de la Roque de Roberval, who was a French woman who was purposefully kicked off a boat on the way to Canada. She was being punished, her and her lover were stranded on an island off of Newfoundland and left to fend for themselves. And so it very much has the same vibe of like, “How are they gonna live? How are they gonna find food?” But it's almost like a combination of Castaway and The Marriage Portrait by Maggie O'Farrell, because it's set in that time period. So, um, yeah, just wanted to mention that also, because it's another book in this vein. 

FRANCESCA: That's my next read, that book. 

AMY: All right. It's good. It's good. 

FRANCESCA: Good to know. 

AMY: So, Francesca, thank you so much for joining us today. This book was so wild and interesting, and so it's really made for a fantastic discussion.

FRANCESCA: Thank you so much for having me. Yeah, I mean, it's fair to say it's unlike anything else I've read. 

AMY: Yeah, no listener will be disappointed if they pick up this book. So that's all for today's episode. Don't forget to join me next week if you're a subscriber. I will be diving a little bit more into the memoir of Gerald Kingsland. That's his account of his time on Tuin with Lucy. Does everything that she mentions in her memoir line up to his account? We're gonna find out. 

KIM: That sounds really fun. I'm intrigued to hear his perspective and how it differs from Lucy's. 

AMY: Our theme song was written and performed by Jennie Malone, and our logo was designed by Harriet Grant. Lost Ladies of Lit is produced by Kim Askew and Amy Helmes.