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Episode 16: "Robinson" by Muriel Spark
90 Plays1 year ago
In Episode 4 of Season 2 we dig into Muriel Spark’s sophomore effort, Robinson. Gotta say: it’s incredible and we couldn’t be more excited to keep on keeping on with her work. This time around we trade London (mostly) for a lonely island in the Atlantic and a story that is funny, tense, clever, whimsical, and just an all-around masterclass in writerly control. None of which is surprising at this point, but absolutely riveting and delightful.
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Music: “The Low Spark of High-Heeled Boys” by Traffic
Logo design: Flynn Kidz Designs
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Transcript
Introduction and Weather Chat
00:00:01
Speaker
Hi, I'm Tom Flynn. And I'm Lori Feathers. And welcome to Lost in Redonda. Hi Lori, how are you doing today? Tom, I'm good and you?
00:00:21
Speaker
It is blistering hot in Chicago in October. It was almost 90 yesterday, and I'm not happy about it. But beyond that, things are good. It's going to rain tonight and tomorrow, and I will be right with the world once again. It will be gray and miserable in October in Chicago. That's what I'm looking at. We must be having the same weather today. It won't be gray and cloudy and cool in Dallas in October, but it's 90 degrees here, and we're getting rain tonight.
00:00:52
Speaker
Yeah, there you go. I mean, there's what it is. This is, this is just what the weather is now, I guess.
Exploring Muriel Spark's 'Robinson'
00:00:59
Speaker
Uh, but
00:01:01
Speaker
Today, we are going to be talking about not quite a tropical situation, but a bit of a almost deserted island as we're digging into Miro Spark's second novel, Robinson. This one came out, I believe, in 1958, so just a couple years after the comforters hit. And this is something you pointed out to me that she's pretty much publishing every two years or so over the course of her career, which is
00:01:29
Speaker
wild. And I'm very curious to see if there's ever a drop off because from the debut to the sophomore novel, uh, they're very different beasts, but I don't know. I feel like she's a, she might be getting stronger from, from one to the next.
00:01:43
Speaker
It's so interesting. These short novels feel so strange to me in the best way. You know, they're not as strange like in a supernatural sense necessarily. I mean, there are some elements of that, but it's not like strange like
00:02:04
Speaker
sci-fi or fantasy, but strange in kind of an unexpected way that the characters think and relate to each other. And her writing is just really quirky, I think, and just a total joy. I'm loving it, and I just can't wait to the next one.
Character Quirks and Interactions
00:02:30
Speaker
It's something I'm looking forward to, each one that we do.
00:02:34
Speaker
When you say quirky, what about it kind of strikes you that way? I think that it's, again, the way that her characters kind of perceive their world and some of the assumptions that they make, certainly the way that they speak and their reactions to
00:02:56
Speaker
one another within the confines of this story. I just find it, again, I'm repeating myself, but kind of unexpected and not how you would predict if you were, I think, a writer and just writing a dialogue between a group of
00:03:20
Speaker
three guys and a gal, which is what a lot of the dialogue is in Robinson. I'm probably not explaining myself very well. I totally hear what you're saying there. I think there's something very unpredictable about the conversations, but at the same time, there's a naturalism to it. This is just how people talk and oftentimes where you have
00:03:49
Speaker
very distinct people with distinct attitudes bouncing off of each other, coming at things with certain assumptions or ideas about what's taking place, and they just sort of
00:04:03
Speaker
Yeah, they they just ping pong. And so that it feels at times like they're I mean, I would say in this novel, January, our protagonist feels at times almost too clever by half, like she's a little bit ahead of the game. But it's more that she's just quick. She's a quick person. And that sense of personhood, her characters just all feel inhabited and real like they just feel like a person you could
00:04:31
Speaker
you could run into in an airport or on a plane flying over the Azores and then suddenly find yourself stuck on an island with them for the next few months. And then what the hell happens from there? How do you interact? How do you get along?
00:04:46
Speaker
Yeah. I mean, one of the quirky aspects of January, apart from her name, is this kind of idea that she has in her head or this practice where when the guy that owns the island, Robinson, does something that she disagrees with or annoys her or pisses her off
00:05:10
Speaker
She just takes a few of his cigarettes, you know, unasked and and to her that's like, you know, she's she's even she's even the scale like, like he just annoyed her. And so she's just going to steal some cigarettes from him. And but I mean, she's she's definitely not the only quirky character. I mean,
00:05:31
Speaker
all five of the characters that are trapped, so to speak, on this island for a period of months have their very own individual peculiarities as well.
00:05:45
Speaker
the theft of the cigarettes is almost like a mortification and explicitly in that religious context. But before we get to the 10-minute mark, let's just do a quick scene setting of what's going on in this novel.
Setting and Plot Overview
00:06:01
Speaker
So Robinson largely takes place on an island called Robinson. I believe it was previously, the name of it was Ferreira.
00:06:10
Speaker
And it follows three people who survive a plane crash onto the island. The island is in the Azores. It's somewhat remote. Its only contact with the outside world is when a ship comes to collect pomegranates. There is a small pomegranate farm on the island.
00:06:28
Speaker
And January wakes up after the crash in terrible pain, and she's being tended to by a man named Robinson. And she finds out that the only people on the island are Robinson, a young boy named Miguel, Jimmy, I believe, Jimmy Waterford. For some reason, Waterford just doesn't stick in my head, so I have to keep referring back to it. A man named Jimmy Waterford, another man named Tom Wells. Jimmy and Tom are the only other survivors of the crash.
00:06:56
Speaker
Yeah, this is told from some years down the line from January's perspective. She uses a journal that Robinson encouraged her to keep while she was on the island as sort of her guide of sorts. Robinson very much encourages her to only write facts, not to include any suppositions, which initially I think January interprets as a way for her not to
00:07:26
Speaker
create hope, hopes that can be crushed, but just kind of stay grounded in the day-to-day. I think there are other reasons why Robinson would discourage flights of fancy, but we can get into those as we move along. But yeah, so she's writing this after the fact about their time on the island. When they crash land, it's going to be, I think, what, three months until the vessel returns, and they have to make the best of it during that time.
00:07:52
Speaker
Yeah, the boat apparently comes around once a year and so they all know that eventually civilization is going to come to them and while
00:08:04
Speaker
The pomegranate boat people don't know that they're going to be rescuing some plane crash survivors. That's when everyone presumes that January and Jimmy and Tom Wells will be able to go back home.
Robinson's Background and Beliefs
00:08:22
Speaker
And January has a boy, a young boy at home.
00:08:29
Speaker
I guess she was in Lisbon doing some well, really doing a transfer because she's a journalist and she was getting ready to write an article about three islands. And so the Azores proper were going to be an island that she covered. But unfortunately, she never gets there because of this plane crash that happens on route from Lisbon to the Azores.
00:08:57
Speaker
But yeah, in some ways, it's this kind of very isolated place that Robinson apparently feels comfortable living there because I think they said that he he has lived there for a number of years. And he's a really interesting guy himself. Should we should we talk a little bit about the owner of the island and the island's namesake, Robinson?
00:09:25
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. Robinson is he's he's he's an interesting guy. He's he's a little strange. Though he doesn't. There is a lot about his demeanor that comes across as strange. I mean, he's perfectly well mannered. He speaks very clearly. He isn't going like saying random things are going off on very strange flights of fancy. He does a very set ideas about things and particularly about religion and superstition. But
00:09:52
Speaker
He's been living on this island for a few years. Prior to that, he spent 10 years living in Mexico in an isolated ranch or some such thing. He's very wealthy. He comes from money. He spent his youth attending seminary with the plan of taking holy orders, becoming a priest, but eventually had a falling out.
00:10:16
Speaker
with the practices of the church, specifically around what he felt was the pagan worship of Mary. He felt the church itself was pushing to folks this idea of Mary is more than like an intermediary.
00:10:32
Speaker
Frankly, that there was a bit of a, and he's not wrong, that there was a bit of a Marianist cult developing within the church, and that this was unacceptable and something to be fought against, or at least he could not be a priest within that context.
Themes of Faith and Conflict
00:10:51
Speaker
Having opted not to do that, having opted not to take orders, that's when he kind of self-isolates. He removes himself from the world. This generates quite a bit of conversation between January and he, as January is a convert to Catholicism, a little bit of a theme developing, at least. Can it be a theme of his two books? Yes. Sure. But I'm also willing to bet it's going to keep happening too.
00:11:20
Speaker
But she's a convert and has her own thoughts on religion, on Catholicism in particular. Man, this book goes into that so much more, or at least in such a different way from The Comforters, a little bit more
00:11:40
Speaker
explicit and fervent of a argument about what it means to be Catholic, what faith actually entails, demonstrations of it, and the like.
00:11:52
Speaker
It's interesting because one of the things that happens in the book is that after the plane crash, January loses consciousness, Tom Wells loses consciousness. I don't think Jimmy is injured, but he never loses consciousness. But when they come to and are in
00:12:16
Speaker
Robinson's home and being cared by him, they ask about their things. Where are my things? And they're pretty much told that, oh, well, you know, everything was scattered everywhere. Many things were destroyed. Many things weren't found.
00:12:33
Speaker
Jimmy, who's the least injured, and Robinson go off and they bury, I guess, the 17 or so people that didn't survive the crash. And they reclamation those people's, I think, pretty much anything that flew off of their bodies or their persons
00:12:53
Speaker
after the crash. And so there's a pile of shoes and there's some odds and ends that at first January is like, no, I'm not going to take or wear any of this stuff. She thinks it just feels not right. But one thing that she hopes to find is her rosary.
00:13:17
Speaker
And that gets kind of into a difficult place with Robinson because he's very adamant that he doesn't want any, what he considers superstitious relics or artifacts or things around. He says because he doesn't want the boy Miguel to be exposed to them because he is very easily influenced by them.
00:13:42
Speaker
But then at the same time you've got Tom Wells and Tom Wells is kind of kind of a bit of a flim flam man. He goes around peddling these lucky charms that he
00:13:52
Speaker
kind of concoct stories about how this person was saved from really extreme circumstances and near death because they were wearing this lucky charm that is, and he's got all kinds of origin stories for what this lucky charm derives from and what it means and why it brings people luck.
00:14:17
Speaker
But Robinson feels the same way about these charms, too. He doesn't want them around. They make him very uncomfortable, apparently, and he thinks that Miguel would be badly influenced by them. So that's kind of like
Survivors' Struggles and Tensions
00:14:32
Speaker
an interesting theme that, in a way, it's the juxtaposition against, I think, something that we would see more as a
00:14:42
Speaker
maybe just because we're more used to people with rosaries then you know these lucky charms that that we think could really make a difference in someone's life but to robinson that kind of i felt he put them kind of in the same bucket yeah very much so um i think
00:15:02
Speaker
In some respects, it ties back to this notion, somewhat pagan notions of how faith works, how belief structures work, and what the purpose of these things are. Wells is interesting because when he's first presented, we're given to believe that he kind of goes in for a lot of the occult
00:15:21
Speaker
stuff. And stuff's, I think, accurate there. These lucky charms are pulled from all over the world, every possible tradition, some to the extent that you don't even know if it's a real thing or not. He keeps referring to this one that's a druidic symbol. And clearly, the newest in the line of charms that he's trying to hawk. But this is a druidic symbol that was found in this place and the person who held it. And you're like,
00:15:48
Speaker
What does a juridic symbol even mean, necessarily? For all we know, it's got Viking runes on it, and he doesn't know any better.
00:15:59
Speaker
But initially, initially, it very much comes across that he's more than a bit of a believer in these things. I think as it moves along, we get a better and better sense of what kind of person he is and what that kind of person would use such things for. And it's not very great. It's mostly to take advantage of people who are seeking something. I think that seeking component is a big part of
00:16:24
Speaker
At least I think it's a big part of what Spark is playing with with this.
00:16:32
Speaker
Clearly in the 50s, there were a lot of different ideas and interests and beliefs going around in England and in London. I will say that we don't see a lot of London in this novel, certainly not anywhere near what we saw in The Comforters. But what we do see in those very scant pages, it feels like an incredibly vibrant, thriving place. It feels full, and especially against an island that feels
00:17:00
Speaker
small and empty in so many ways. Yeah, you kind of get the sense that January lived a bit, you know, she's a journalist, she's a writer, and she lives in Chelsea with her young son. And it's kind of the same milieu as we saw in the in the comforters in some ways, you know, just kind of going out with your friends and, and it being like a very social intellectually stimulating type of place.
00:17:28
Speaker
With this context of it being intellectual, social, people just kind of rubbing shoulders, I mean, there certainly seems to also be the sense of people trying to find out, like, find purpose and find direction and find meaning. And some folks are finding that through these occult practices of Lucky Charms and the like. And January comes to it through her conversion to Roman Catholicism. And I think that there's
00:17:54
Speaker
there is a bit of an undercurrent of that seeking that Spark is kind of exploring. And also in how the convert interacts with the person born into a thing. Because much like Caroline and then the comforters, January doesn't always get along very well with those who came up in the Roman Catholic faith.
00:18:16
Speaker
especially her brother-in-law, Ian. But maybe we should say something about Jerry having this son, but a little bit about her family life to give us even more context for who she is and how she got to where she ended up. Yeah. She becomes pregnant really early in life. She, in fact, has to drop out of, I guess, what would be the equivalent of high school for us.
00:18:41
Speaker
And she has the baby, even though there are numbers of her family who think that she should have an abortion instead.
January's Family Dynamics
00:18:48
Speaker
She has the baby. She's got two sisters, both of whom are married. She's not a fan of either of their husbands, but she was estranged from the sisters for a while after the birth of her child, but then they kind of had a reconciliation
00:19:07
Speaker
Yeah, when she's on the island, when she's on Robinson, she kind of makes a lot of parallels between Robinson and her sister's husband, Ian. And I think in part because both are birthright Catholics and then both have this kind of
00:19:29
Speaker
thing about the Catholic Church is corrupt because it's all about this worship of idols of the Virgin Mary. She sees some parallels at times, but another time she kind of doubts some of the parallels she sees. One of the distinctions she makes is that, well, Ian is just kind of an ass, so to speak. He likes to argue with her, and he doesn't really have a lot to support his
00:19:57
Speaker
his convictions about the criticisms of the Catholic Church, but whereas Robinson has actually published, you know, real articles that have been in journals about where the Catholic Church has gone astray and what's wrong with the Catholic Church and the symbolism that the Catholic Church has kind of adopted that kind of, according to Robinson at least, corrupts the faith.
00:20:22
Speaker
There's a distinction I think that she's drawing between reason and ranker Ian travels to the continent just to go see festivals and complain about them and to which everyone else is like well why bother going and it's like I have to bear witness to this sort of thing and
00:20:39
Speaker
He also seems to have a particular interest or fascination with January. She is the only of the three sisters to have a child. I think on Ian's end, there's a certain distaste for women and a certain cruelty that's factoring into it. I think with Robinson, it ends up being much more of an intellectual exercise or an intellectual engagement with his faith that's leading him in those particular directions.
00:21:07
Speaker
And January's husband dies within six months of them being married. So I'm not even sure that he necessarily sees Brian, the son. Yeah, I can't recall. I feel like the father of the child is dispensed with in two sentences. And then he appears very briefly later that he was 58 when they got together and that they got together on a bet and then is never brought up again. There are a lot of those moments dropped in throughout.
00:21:35
Speaker
there is a conversation with Miguel, where they're trying to figure out how old he is and when it's his birthday. And he clearly doesn't know
00:21:44
Speaker
But he picks January 1st, and January says, that's my birthday. And suddenly, I was like, oh, well, now we know why. Her sisters are Agnes and Julia, and she's January, clearly because she was at four on January 1st. So her parents decided that's the way to go. I love the level of control Spark has with just how tightly constructed these novels are, but also those sorts of little moments flitted in that gives such depth to the character.
00:22:11
Speaker
without seeing anything at all. It doesn't actually give you serious insight into January, but it makes you as the reader feel that much more connected to her. I don't know. It just generates such an empathetic connection to a character to do that. And this is her second novel. And she was doing the first one, so why shouldn't she do the second one? But there's a master level craftsmanship going on here that's really
00:22:40
Speaker
It's a joy to read, I find. Well, I found that kind of connection as well with when there are descriptions of when January's on the island and she's thinking about her son and some of the things she's done with her son and the places they've gone. His name is Brian. And Brian seems to interact with his mother.
00:23:05
Speaker
is like a complete adult he's he's and they do like very adult things like she doesn't seem to have this kind of motherly affectionate relationship with him i'm you know i think she loves them and but but she does she just kind of.
00:23:23
Speaker
treats him like an adult and he seems to respond to her as an adult, although I think he's what, like seven or something? He's quite young. No, he's older than that. He's like actually a teenager, I think. I think she suggests at some point, she's just something about 16 years ago or something like that that suggests around when, and when he's taught, I mean, he definitely, even setting that aside,
00:23:45
Speaker
He talks like he's in his 20s. He talks like he is someone who moves about Chelsea on his own without any concerns or anything else.
00:23:58
Speaker
January suspects Ian of at times following her because she says that he's always on the lookout and waiting to try to catch her having a tryst with a guy. And Brian and she see Ian kind of spying on them before he sees them. And then when Ian kind of
00:24:21
Speaker
can no longer deny that he's there because they've spotted him. Brian just says,
00:24:29
Speaker
Oh, well, would you like to join us for some coffee? January isn't ready to extend any common courtesy to him because what's he doing? He's being so totally dishonest and distrustful and trying to catch her doing something bad, but Brian just steps in and does the polite thing to keep everything smooth within the family. In that specific instance,
00:24:55
Speaker
They were not in London. They were on the continent, weren't they? They were in France. Right. They thought Ian was in Germany at some festival. They noticed him because she noticed a car circling around where she was every few minutes. Finally, she looked harder and realized it was Ian driving it. This isn't just like
00:25:18
Speaker
peeking over the fence to see if there's someone in the backyard with her. This is tracking them down in a foreign country. Right. And Jerry, of course, is like, this is bizarre. And as you said, Brian's just kind of like, oh, okay, well, we're having coffee. Do you want some? For him, perhaps, Ian is just his uncle, right? And this is just what this guy is like. I don't know.
00:25:39
Speaker
Well, it's funny too.
Family Tensions and Independence
00:25:42
Speaker
There's a lot of humor in this book, just like the comforters, but January, she's got a lot of time on her hands on this island and she kind of has this rumination from time to time about how, you know,
00:25:55
Speaker
wonder who Brian is staying with? Is he staying with my sister and Ian or is he staying with my other sister and her husband Curly? And although she's not a huge fan of Curly either, she very much prefers and hopes that Brian is staying with Curly because he's just, I guess, just not this
00:26:19
Speaker
gotcha kind of guy that Ian seems to be and in some ways just insufferable with his whole religious rant that doesn't really have a lot of thoughtful meaning behind it.
00:26:31
Speaker
And I also just think that you have in this one family, these three sisters, January, who gets pregnant at probably like 16 or 17, is widowed almost immediately and raises the son. You have Agnes, the oldest, who marries their mother's doctor a month after the mother's death. And Ian's not significant but older than Agnes. And you have Julia, who's married a guy named Curly, who's also a bit of a bookie.
00:27:01
Speaker
And that range of experience in one family I think also speaks to sort of the social movement, the dynamism that she really gets across about the London of that time. There's also a really great scene of Curly taking Brian out on the town for an evening and just talking to him like he's a little man and just
00:27:27
Speaker
It's the kind of thing where you, you have expected at the end of it for January to make some sort of comment about the things that Curly did with her son, but it doesn't happen. She is sort of like, and that, and the stories relayed and then we're done. Like it just, the lack of judgment there, I thought was really fascinating and very neat and gave some really interesting insight to how January seems to, to function and move through the world.
00:27:53
Speaker
Should we talk about Jimmy? Because, you know, Jimmy, of course, was on the plane from Lisbon and he's one of the survivors.
Character Exploration: Jimmy
00:28:03
Speaker
But it turns out that he's a relative of Robinson and actually the heir to Robinson Island. Should anything happen to Robinson? As we said earlier, Robinson is very wealthy. The money comes from his parents and family holdings.
00:28:21
Speaker
And it's come to pass that they are involved in the motor scooter business in Northern Africa. And basically, Jimmy was traveling on this plane to land in the Azores and then take a boat over.
00:28:41
Speaker
basically spend the time to try and convince Robinson to sign over all control to Jimmy to basically expedite the process of him becoming the heir and just no longer the heir, but actually in charge of the family finances.
00:28:57
Speaker
because they want to make some business moves and the whole sort of thing, but they can't if Robinson is in charge. And Jimmy is also not English. He speaks English haltingly with some really interesting syntax, which is also an interesting thing. Robinson himself is also not English, near as I can tell, despite his name. Yeah, I think both Robinson and Jimmy grew up in Gibraltar. Right. And I think that Jimmy, at least,
00:29:27
Speaker
I don't know. Perhaps Gibraltar was a Dutch colony, but there's reference to the fact that Jimmy's native tongue, I think, is Dutch. But his speech throughout this book and just the way he talks, it's one of the most delightful things. And I think I commented to you, Tom, that it's something that
00:29:54
Speaker
I think would be so tricky to just hit the right note so that it's not annoying to the reader. But I loved it. It didn't annoy me at all. I don't know. What was your impression? Oh, I thought it was great. I also just marvel at the consistency as well. I mean, just like how someone who's not a native speaker might hit upon a phrase that to them perfectly encapsulates what they think and what they're feeling.
00:30:23
Speaker
is almost nonsensical, but simply by like, dent of repetition, you start to get a sense of it. So for instance, is not to be endured, I lose my nerves. Wherefore a conference is enough that I grieve in my heart. And like, it's
00:30:39
Speaker
It almost sounds like a phrase book or one of those old computer programs trying to translate from one language to the next with no awareness of how to actually smooth things over. It's really great. I wasn't thinking this when I was reading it, but listening to you read it aloud, it's almost like a really intelligent, unannoying Yoda. Yes. It also sounds to me like some of the aliens encountered in some of the Star Trek episodes where they just can't
00:31:09
Speaker
I can't quite get it whatever is doing the translation just can't quite handle everything that's being thrown at it so it comes out and very like very choppy anyway, right and and and everything Feels declarative even if it's not Now it's it's really fun I mean and Jimmy Jimmy in January form a bit of a bond others in the island seem to have some concerns that it might be something else forming there and
00:31:37
Speaker
I think it's really sweet how January is quite upset because she's lost all of her makeup in the crash. She has no skincare products for her face, and this is upsetting to her. Of course, as you would expect on a deserted island, the guys are not sympathetic to this at all, except for Jimmy. Jimmy is very sympathetic to the fact that January has this
00:32:05
Speaker
this need for stuff to put on her face and to look pretty and i just thought it was so sweet the way he interacts with her in that regard.
00:32:17
Speaker
She also makes a comment that she feels like she is revealing too much when she doesn't have makeup on her face, that there is there is a masking that she's attempting as well. Well, you've you mentioned Tom, the journals. And one of the things that the journals do is provide some exposition on the characters. And this was, I think, for me, the funniest part of the book by far. But January recalls in her journal
00:32:47
Speaker
A story that Jimmy told about his birth mother. Do you remember this?
00:32:53
Speaker
It's the weirdest thing. So he claims that his birth mother, part of this wealthy Gibraltar family, was away from home for a while. And her father, his grandfather, was extremely strict about the food that was served in the house. And they had a personal chef.
00:33:20
Speaker
And one of the things that the father was adamant about was that you couldn't put any salt or pepper or any other condiment or spice on the food when it was brought to the table, that the chef brought it
00:33:35
Speaker
out as it was meant to be tasted and presented, and it was sinful to make any adulteration to the chef's artistry. But nonetheless, there was always like a full salt and pepper shakers on the table. And so in defiance of this known rule, the daughter grown at this time returns to the home
00:34:03
Speaker
and proceeds to put a little pile of salt on her plate and everyone around the table just gasps and they're like in shock, like how could you? And her father becomes very angry and so she just walks out of the house and with the intention of going to spend the night at an inn, she just decides to live on the streets from thereafter.
00:34:30
Speaker
It's it's it's it's phrase something like and she finds that she that she finds that she rather likes life on the streets or something like that. It's just so strange. And then and then January speculates that she actually wonders about that story and
00:34:46
Speaker
would guess that Jimmy is actually Robinson's half-brother and not second cousin, which is also interesting with Miguel, who is not Robinson's son, the young boy living on the island, but is instead the child of one of the pomegranate farmers. The mother died, and so the
00:35:07
Speaker
I mean, we say pomegranate farmer, but they're also sailors. He brings them on board and then he dies. And so Robinson takes them on in order to care for him until he's old enough to be sent off to school, which is what's supposed to happen when the boat comes anyways, is that Miguel is also going to leave the island and head to Lisbon for
00:35:27
Speaker
before education. I didn't think of it before, but when you were talking about Miguel, the juxtaposition between the two boys in the book. Yeah, Brian might be older, but she's also thinking in the past when he was at a younger age. Miguel is a very vulnerable kid.
00:35:52
Speaker
Even though he's on this island and can traipse around wherever he wants, he seems to be very much almost tied to Robinson in almost a literal way, a physical way. He follows Robinson around everywhere. Robinson perhaps facilitates this or has made Miguel
00:36:14
Speaker
a codependent or dependent on him. But yeah, he gets very upset. He cries a lot. He's an emotional kid. He's not at all like Brian.
00:36:26
Speaker
Yeah, there's a real naivete to Miguel, so much so that there's a bit of a competition among the three castaways as to who Miguel will most like. And he gloms on to Tom Wells, partially because it seems like Wells is a little bit more physically active, like playing kind of roughhousing a bit with the kid or getting him involved in those sorts of things. Even though Wells
00:36:50
Speaker
Wells is unconscious and was probably the most badly injured with busted up ribs. And kind of whenever he feels like not doing something, he'll claim that his ribs are acting up. Meanwhile, he'll be happy to be on the lawn playing whatever with Miguel.
00:37:08
Speaker
Yeah, and Tom Wells also gives Miguel some of his doodads too, some of his lucky charms. It's also interesting, I noticed this when I was reading it, and I don't know if there's an answer to this, but every time there's a mention of Tom, it's Tom Wells. She uses his last name every time. I'm not quite sure. I don't have a good theory about why that is.
00:37:35
Speaker
Doesn't she say at the start that his name sticks in her head better than Jimmy's does that took her or was it the other way around? I can't quite.
00:37:44
Speaker
remember. Oh, yeah. It's very early on. She gets to keep asking what Jimmy's name is. But it was a full week before the name had sunk in Jimmy Waterford. This Jimmy is very friendly to me as if we were previously acquainted. It literally comes out that they chatted on the plane. It was some time before I remembered having met him on the Lisbon plane. The monosyllabic Tom Wells, however, stuck in my head right away. I think it's just because there's something about that Tom Wells that just sort of
00:38:12
Speaker
rings for her. And it also demonstrates sort of the distance. I mean, Wells is not
00:38:20
Speaker
as much of a character in the novel until about the midway point, whereas she spends a lot of time with Robinson, some time with Miguel and a good bit of time with Jimmy and interacting and having conversations. Wells' sort of pops up, but his role doesn't really kick in until the back half of the novel, which is probably a good point to talk a little bit more about.
00:38:43
Speaker
what's happened. We've talked a lot about that they're on this island. There are these castaways. We've kind of filled in a little bit of January's backstory and some of the various characters, like who they were and how they kind of ended up being where they are.
Mysterious Disappearance and Mystery
00:38:56
Speaker
But it's made clear that Robinson seemed to be much more comfortable with the people on the island while they were invalids. And as they started to move around more and as they started to express agency, as it were, his temperament
00:39:11
Speaker
seems to change. He's very insistent on things being done a certain way. And he, yeah, he kind of just can't quite give on certain things and frankly starts to argue with, or not even argue, just state that it's his island, this is how things are, and I expect you to respect that.
00:39:32
Speaker
Which is a rather tricky thing to say to three adults who are finding themselves in the circumstance they didn't sign up for. But for Robinson, that doesn't really matter. And eventually he discovers that January is making a rosary for Miguel. And that's a real problem for Robinson. He says as much. And that evening, her rosary and Wells' recovered cargo, which is a suitcase full of his
00:40:02
Speaker
you know, lucky charms disappear. And the next morning, they discover these things are gone, but they also discover that Robinson is nowhere to be seen. And when they finally venture outside, they find trample grass and blood.
00:40:17
Speaker
And slowly but surely, they track it up to this island is formed by a volcano that's still moderately active. They go to the furnace, as Robinson referred to it. And it looks to all the world like Robinson was attacked, dragged to the top of the volcano, and thrown in. And so now this novel that was about some castaways and engaging in
00:40:43
Speaker
religious doctrinal conversation about expiation and the like, it's now turned into a locked room mystery because they are the only people on the island who possibly could have attacked and killed Robinson.
00:40:58
Speaker
Yeah, you think that all the tension for the first half of the novel is just going to continue to be this kind of psychological tension because you've got like this low-grade warfare going on between the control freak Robinson
00:41:15
Speaker
who makes comments like, you're eating too much food, we don't have certain supplies here anymore, or I'm going to take your rosary from you.
00:41:30
Speaker
How dare you accuse me of going into your room and taking your rosary because is it really your room? It's my room. This is my house. So that kind of like low boil tension and then all of the sudden it's like Robinson has disappeared.
00:41:48
Speaker
half the side of the mountain is like a bloodbath and they see all of these clothes, much more clothing than Robinson could have possibly had worn on his body or anyone's body. I mean, it's a lot of clothes that they find almost soaked in blood on this trail that leads to the furnace.
00:42:09
Speaker
Yeah, and then January just starts understandably. Like, what the hell is going on? Thinks that the most likely scenario is that Jimmy and Tom Wells acted in concert to kill Robinson for some reason. There's some other theories that she has as well, but
00:42:30
Speaker
she seems to kind of think that's the most likely we should notice well that it becomes known to the readers quite early because i guess megal tells january and jimmy about it one day that there are three secret passages.
00:42:47
Speaker
on the island, like caves or tunnels that go from one point to the other. And this is a pretty big island. I mean, there's a topographical map and a place map at the beginning, and it says that it's 84 square miles. So you could very easily get lost in this island. And I love the fact that the shape of the island is kind of like a murdered person. It's got legs and arms and
00:43:16
Speaker
She even mentions the fact that if you're looking at it from an aerial view, it looks kind of like a person that's just been splayed out. Yeah, it definitely has the chalk outline feel to a crime scene photo, which is great. Yeah, somewhat early on, January's at the
00:43:36
Speaker
There's really like one decent beach on the island. Robinson has told them not to go into the water because of sharks, that there are strong currents and the currents don't get you, the sharks will. There is a freshwater lake right near the house that they all stay at.
00:43:52
Speaker
January's at the beach and she sees Miguel and I forget exactly why but she kind of goes after like follows after him and he disappears or no rather she starts to head back to the house and Miguel gets there well before she got there and there was no way for him to pass around the track and so it comes out that there are the secret passages and Robinson is against them knowing about them and
00:44:18
Speaker
In some ways, he's rather reluctant for them to see too much of the island in general. He's kind of keeping them near the house as much as he can, seemingly. But after Robinson disappears, they search the whole island to see if they can find Robinson, to see if there's anyone else on the island, and they insist that Miguel show them the secret passages.
00:44:37
Speaker
But that's just another fun layer. Suddenly the house you've been staying in, the walls aren't really walls. They're actually hallways and anyone can get anywhere faster if you know about this little secret. It's neat. It adds another layer and it frankly serves a function within the larger narrative too as it moves along.
00:45:00
Speaker
Yeah, we find out as well that there's a gun room. When Robinson goes missing, there's a gun room and January is determined that she's going to keep control of all of the guns that leave the gun room and she puts the key to the gun room
00:45:20
Speaker
that she steals from Robinson's bedroom after he disappears around her neck with a string because she wants to control the guns. There's all these kind of locked room kind of elements to it. Did this happen to you as well where it felt like
00:45:37
Speaker
the house and even the island would expand and shrink as the narrative almost demanded.
Island Exploration and Hidden Secrets
00:45:45
Speaker
Like you said, all of a sudden there's a gun room and all of a sudden, and maybe it's partially because when Robinson disappears, they have greater rain of the island and of the space so that they actually inhabit it more fully. It's not just the rooms they're sleeping in, the kitchen, the veranda and that.
00:46:03
Speaker
Yeah, maybe it's just that, that they're now able to go in other places. And there was no reason to talk about the gun room before, because who cares if there was a gun room? Well, now that there might be a killer on the island, the gun room means quite a few more things and is far more important. It's interesting, it gave a, not fantastical, but it kind of upped some of the uncertainty around the circumstances when
00:46:29
Speaker
the gun room appeared and they started going into Robinson's study more. She made a closer study of his library, which when she first saw it, she's somewhat dismissed because the books were behind glass and that's not something she would ever do. And then she looked, in the way it was disappearing, she looked harder and was like, oh, this is actually a really good reference library. And look, here are all the books on Marianist theology and they're really well-thumbed and annotated.
00:46:54
Speaker
he really did his work. And she starts to have this different appreciation of Robinson. It's tracking through January's mind as she's taking in the people around her, the circumstances on the island, and just how
00:47:12
Speaker
how it tacks between perspectives. Is Jimmy a murderer? Tom Wells, he seems like he's actually mixed up in some even worse stuff or other worse things. And Jimmy has a motive, right?
00:47:27
Speaker
Jimmy has a motive. He stands to inherit all this. A chapter opens with her trying to put on the persona of each person by adopting their physical characteristics in her mind. And Tom Wells is angry. Is he angry enough to kill? Well, maybe not quite that angry. But her take on each person changes over the course of the novel in such interesting and true to life ways, I find. It's just such a
00:47:56
Speaker
It's a real feat of psychology, of constructing a person's personality, I guess, which is a terrible way of putting it. It's really quite something. I mean, it's a brilliantly constructed novel, but even as just sort of experiencing someone else's mind for a bit, it's really quite
Humor and Tension in the Mystery
00:48:21
Speaker
wonderful.
00:48:21
Speaker
Well, I just feel like once Robinson disappears and all the blood is found, Spark just ramps up the fun factor. It's like, okay, we're turning the volume to nine, because it's just...
00:48:37
Speaker
You don't see this kind of coming. And then it's suddenly, oh my God, what's happened? And now you get into that classic locked room scenario where everyone starts suspecting everyone else. And now suddenly Tom Wells
00:48:58
Speaker
claims. I can't move like you guys can and you guys are going out to look for Robinson, but I'm afraid to be in this house by myself. I don't think you should leave me alone so that I'll just be the next one to get picked off kind of thing. Yeah, it's a really fun book. Yeah, it's almost like the moment Robinson disappears, the wet blanket has been removed, dad's gone, and so now the party can kick off and it really gets
00:49:27
Speaker
people's personalities become much more apparent without that sort of
00:49:32
Speaker
restriction that Robinson and as the owner of the house, as their savior functionally, when he's gone, all bets really do become off and things get very strange and very dangerous and very funny very, very, very quickly. We're not going to go into how the novel wraps itself because in some ways it matters, but it's not the point of this novel and it's
00:50:00
Speaker
It's fun. It's also very interesting. And one of the best bits of banter in the whole novel comes towards the end. And I don't want to spill that for anyone.
00:50:10
Speaker
Yeah, I feel the same way, Tom. It's very much it's the ride that's fun. It's the fact that you think you're in one type of novel and then she just flips the switch on you and now suddenly you're in a murder mystery. And on that note, I think this is a good moment as we're starting to wrap up, kind of talk about maybe some of the antecedents of this novel.
00:50:35
Speaker
I mean, look, it's called Robinson, and it's about people on a almost desert island. Clearly, there's some Robinson Crusoe going on here, which I will confess to. I've probably read selections of it over the years. I've never sat down and read the whole thing. I don't know about you. Have you read Robinson Crusoe? No. No. Sadly not.
00:50:56
Speaker
But I did a quick look in to see what themes people pull out, kind of check back in on the plot. My memory of Robinson Crusoe is that he's just on an island. The actual novel, he's doing a lot more than that. He engages in the slave trade. He owns a plantation in Brazil. There's a lot.
00:51:14
Speaker
There's a lot more to old Robinson than I think usually gets portrayed in, well, at least the media, the 50s. Probably my only real sense of it is, I don't know, the movie versions of it that I walked past and saw a part of on TNT one day or something like that.
00:51:33
Speaker
or Turner classic movies, what have you. One interesting thing that I came across in looking through that is that when trapped in this island, well, two interesting things. When trapped in this island, Caruso goes to some lengths to husband it very heavily, to make it productive for fruits and vegetables, to make sure that he's able to live on it by the land itself because he doesn't have much of a choice. He also reads the Bible and undergoes something of a
00:52:03
Speaker
spiritual awakening, basically a conversion or a full acceptance of Christianity. So you have the bit of the convert story in Robinson Crusoe, which we're seeing also playing out a bit, more than a bit, in Robinson. But the character of Robinson in Sparks Telling does almost nothing to maintain the island. He mostly relies on some hunting, but
00:52:32
Speaker
tinned food that's left on a yearly basis by the ship. Doesn't really seem to touch the pomegranate since that's the point of the island or what people come there for, but we'll pick off some mangoes that are growing on trees that have been left to kind of grow on their own
00:52:48
Speaker
the menu apparently isn't very good as a result. But that convergence of the spiritual conversion, but also the divergence of actually maintaining the land, I think is kind of interesting for the obvious connection via the titles of the novels. It is really interesting that you mentioned some of the storyline of Robinson Caruso because
00:53:14
Speaker
More than once January is very critical either explicitly or in her mind of Robinson and his failure to make any attempts to cultivate the island you know to grow
00:53:30
Speaker
any number of things to make it self-sustaining. And there are times when she's concerned about their diet and she goes and picks nettles and cooks them because she thinks they're not getting enough vitamins. So yeah, I didn't know that about Robinson Caruso, but that's really interesting. I guess when I was looking at comparative titles or influences,
00:53:53
Speaker
I was thinking maybe intentionally or maybe these are the ones that just came up to me, female authors, and one that I wanted to bring up just in the context of the first few lines
00:54:09
Speaker
of the novel, which I want to read quickly. And I'll just preface this by saying that Robinson was published, I think, as we said, in 1958. And the book that comes to mind when I read the first lines of the book Robinson was published in 1938. So here it goes.
00:54:29
Speaker
If you ask me how I remember the island, what it was like to be stranded there by misadventure for nearly three months, I would answer that it was a time and landscape of the mind, if I did not have the visible signs to summon its materiality.
00:54:45
Speaker
The book I'm thinking about is Rebecca by Daphne Desmourne. It's like that mandorly thing where she's thinking back and it's now just like a product of her mind's eyes as she's thinking back to mandorly. That just came to me right before we came on the air and I was like,
00:55:10
Speaker
Oh wow, yeah, that really resonates.
Literary Comparisons and Influences
00:55:14
Speaker
That really sounds to me like the same kind of dreamy kind of tone-like quality that Rebecca has. Yeah, I have this theory that I think I kind of suggested in the Comforters episode that I feel like she's spark is kind of
00:55:31
Speaker
incorporating or reassessing a lot of English literature. And we'll see, but she might be tackling them in turn in different ways to incorporate elements of Rebecca and some of the more gothic components within the context of a deserted island sounds to me
00:55:54
Speaker
Again, this is only the second book that I've read of hers, but it sounds to me like her sense of humor as a way of putting things together and seeing what comes out. I also think it's on the topic of deserted islands or islands that no person has a really good reason to live on and that there's an island of the mind. I don't know. It makes me think of Redonda. Of course, of course. Which is very fun and a very nice, very pleasant resonance to come back up.
00:56:23
Speaker
Yeah. And then you have those great locked room mysteries, you know, Agatha Christie's, and then there were none. It was published in 1939 under a very different and not nice name that we don't need to repeat. Perfect name. Not much improved in its initial American edition. Right. Yeah.
00:56:47
Speaker
And then you've got Dorothy Sayers, Gotti Knight too. Both of those locked room mysteries, so to speak, were published in the 30s. So, you know, like 20 years before Robinson. And also fantastically popular. I mean, those are books that everyone who read would have read at that time. And even to this day, a high percentage of readers will have read those books versus
00:57:15
Speaker
other instant classics or other classics. Certainly books that she would be aware of and would be pulling from or perhaps messing about with ever so slightly in her own mystery. Right. Well, I can't wait for our next mural spark.
00:57:34
Speaker
This is so fun. I'm very excited. I believe the next one up is Memento Mori. Correct. Is that correct? Yeah, which was published. I think I double checked this last time because we were initially unsure if it was Memento Mori or Robinson that was next. But Memento Mori came out in 59. So her first three novels all came out within three years of each other, the number two and three, like practically months apart. She's hitting it, hitting it out of the ballpark.
00:58:01
Speaker
I mean, but it'll be interesting, also interesting to see like, is there, is there an interesting twinning that happens between a mental more in Robinson? I've no idea, but I'm very, I'm very excited to find out. Me too, Tom.