Other writers have been instrumental not only in helping me with tricky bits of the manuscript, but with keeping my sanity intact, especially Melanie Wold, who gave me her Boothbay Harbor house as a retreat; and Elisabeth Brink, Maddie Dawson, Diane Debrovner, Lorraine Glennon, Terri Giuliano Long, Kate Kelly, Cathleen Medwick, Amy Sue Nathan, Carla Panciera, Sandi Kahn Shelton, Ginnie Smith, and Jane Ward, who all made me believe I really am a novelist.
How lucky am I to be a member of such villages? The luckiest.
Holly Robinson is a ghostwriter and journalist whose work appears regularly in national venues such as Better Homes and Gardens, Huffington Post, Ladies’ Home Journal, More, Open Salon, and Parents. She is the author of The Gerbil Farmer’s Daughter: A Memoir and The Wishing Hill, her first NAL Accent novel. She holds a BA in biology from Clark University and an MFA in creative writing from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.
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BEACH PLUM ISLAND
Holly Robinson
This Conversation Guide is intended to enrich the individual reading experience, as well as encourage us to explore these topics together—because books, and life, are meant for sharing.
A CONVERSATION WITH HOLLY ROBINSON
Q. What gave you the original story idea for Beach Plum Island?
A. Every writer’s mind is a bit like a junk drawer. Just as I stash odd rubber bands, bits of string, coins, bottle caps, and mystery objects in my kitchen drawer, I keep interesting stories, scenery, and characters in some dark, cluttered compartment of my mind. When I need an idea, I pull out the drawer and marvel at what tumbles out. In this case, what tumbled out was a story my mom told me years ago about babysitting for a local family in her small Maine town. She was twelve years old when she went to this neighbor’s house and was told, “The kids are asleep, so you won’t have much to do. All we ask is that you don’t go into the back bedroom.” Soon after the parents went out for the evening, my mother heard a strange sound behind that bedroom door and opened it to find a blind little boy, who came running out and tried to climb on everything—and clung to my mom. That story kernel blossomed into this complex, emotional novel.
Q. You published your first novel, The Wishing Hill, in July 2013. Was the process of writing this novel different from writing that one?
A. Absolutely! I wrote The Wishing Hill organically—that is, by the seat of my pants, floundering around until the story evolved. When my wonderful editor, Tracy Bernstein, asked me for a synopsis describing the second novel, I was horrified. A synopsis is odiously hard to write, plus I was worried that I might lose interest in the book if I knew how it ended. Instead, the opposite happened: Writing a synopsis provided me with a blueprint for Beach Plum Island, which ended up making the writing go faster. I still had plenty of room to play around and the characters continuously surprised me. I am now a firm believer in writing a synopsis when plotting out a novel.
Q. At one point in Beach Plum Island, Ava reflects that motherhood is a “business, complete with compromises and disappointing returns for your investments, with budgets and schedules and task lists and surly underlings.” On balance, do you feel like being a mother has helped or hurt your career as a writer?
A. Like most working mothers, I feel a combination of frustration and joy on most days as I juggle family, household, and work responsibilities. It’s probably true that I would have started publishing novels sooner if I hadn’t had children. However, I feel, as Ava does, that motherhood has helped define not only who I am as a person, but who I am as a writer, in a profound way. I feel incredibly blessed to have both my family and work that I love. Who cares if the vacuuming doesn’t get done?
Q. A lot of the tensions in this novel arise because a father leaves one family to create another. Do you have any experience with blended families?
A. I do. I married my second husband when our children—a boy and a girl from each side—were six, seven, eight, and nine years old. We then added another child of our own two years later, which gave us the “yours, mine, and ours” sort of blended family. It has been a happy experience for us, overall, but not without struggles along the way, due to challenges unique to navigating two distinct family cultures. I love writing about blended families because I think it gives readers hope that these families can be just as happy as so-called “normal” biological ones.
Q. There are a lot of surprising facts in this book, such as those about the adoption process, horseback riding, pottery, and schools for the visually impaired. Did you do a lot of research as you were writing?
A. I did. I love doing research for my novels, because I always learn surprising things. For instance, as I was writing this book, I took pottery lessons at a local studio. In any subject, though, after I’ve gathered as much information as I can, I try to use as little of it as possible. I hate reading novels where the writer does an “information dump” in the middle of a crucial scene, so that you’re suddenly aware you’re reading a book and not living the story anymore.
Q. Are you working on another novel now?
A. Yes, I’ve just started a novel called Lake Utopia. This is another powerfully emotional novel based on a family story my mother told me about the mysterious drowning of a child. Like The Wishing Hill and Beach Plum Island, it unfolds like a tensely paced mystery, with new secrets unveiled in every chapter.
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
1. Elaine chooses to live with her mother during her last year of life, while Ava steers clear of her mother’s mental health issues and concentrates on her own family. Did these women make the right choices?
2. Why is it so much easier for Ava to acknowledge that Gigi is their sister than it is for Elaine, and how do their attitudes toward their father’s second family help determine the events in the novel?
3. Gigi and Elaine both have unsatisfactory sexual encounters in Beach Plum Island. What propels them into these relationships? Do you think their behavior is realistic or not?
4. Ava tells Simon that we each “carry landscapes inside us.” What does she mean by this? If you had to describe a landscape to represent your own life, what would that landscape look like?
5. At one point, Ava says to Gigi, “Nobody outside a marriage can really know what’s happening on the inside of it.” How is this true for the married couples in this book? In your own life?
6. Ava compares raising a child to making a piece of art. Do you think parenting is more of an art or a science?
7. Do you agree with Elaine’s assessment early in the novel that Ava has “no idea what it was like to live in the real world”? Or is Elaine deluding herself by thinking she’s more worldly than her sister?
8. Ava and Elaine both fall in love with men who they think are “wrong” for them. Why do they think that, and what makes these relationships work, contrary to their own expectations?
9. What role do sibling relationships play in this novel? How have your own sibling relationships helped shape your life?
10. At some point, Elaine thinks, “Why are we here? Why do one thing and not another? Why love one person and not someone else, or anyone at all, if everyone’s story ends the same way?” Do you think she answers these questions by the end of Beach Plum Island? Have you answered them in your own life?
11. Many women gave Peter up when he was a child: Suzanne, Marie, and Finley. What were the societal and cultural reasons each woman did what she did? How might things have gone differently if Peter had been born now instead of in the nineteen seventies?
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