Charlotte McConaghy, WILD DARK SHORE: A Novel

[2:04]Zibby Owens: Hi. This is Zibby Owens, and you're listening to Totally Booked with Zibby. Formerly, moms don't have time to read books. In my daily show, I interview today's latest best selling, buzziest, or underrated authors and story creators whose work I think is worth your time. As a bookstore owner, publisher, author, and obviously podcaster, I get a comprehensive look at everything that's coming out and spend my time curating the best books so you don't have to. Stay in the know, get insider insights, and connect with guests like I do every single day. For more information, go to zibbymedia.com, and follow me on Instagram at Zibby Owens. Charlotte McConaughey is the author of wild dark shore, a novel. By the way, I am obsessed with this book. Charlotte is the New York Times bestselling author of the novels wild dark shore, once there were wolves, and migrations, which are being translated into more than 20 languages. She is based in Sydney, Australia. Welcome, Charlotte. So excited to talk to you about Wild Dark Shore. Congratulations. Thank you. Thanks for having me. I loved this book so much. I could not put it down. I was on a flight. We landed. I was reading it in the aisle. I was reading it, walking out to the car. I was reading it in the car. I could not put it down. Oh my gosh. Especially, like not especially, but those final, like, 50 to a 100 pages. I don't even know. Like, woah. They're killer. Yep. Yeah. They're a killer. I was gasping. I was crying. I was I had every emotion. It was a roller coaster. Oh, well, that's really nice to hear.

[3:43]Charlotte McConaghy: Okay. Tell listeners what the book is about, please. Sure. So Wild Duck Shore is the story of Dominic Soult and his three children who are the caretakers of a very small, remote, rugged island down near Antarctica. They're the last inhabitants on this island because the sea levels are rising. It's very dangerous until during a really terrible storm. A woman washes ashore and she's bringing with her a whole lot of secrets and she also discovers that the family have lots of things hidden as well. So it's a bit of a Gothic mystery. It's very romantic and it's I think it's ultimately an exploration of what we do for the people we love, raising children in a in a dying world, the interconnectedness of all living things. Wow.

[4:36]Zibby Owens: Well, it was meaningful and poignant on just so many levels. Oh my gosh. Let's talk about the environmental piece first because that is a huge, I feel, a huge part of the book, the animal life. Do you have a scene with a humpback whale and her cub, which, like, broke my heart? It was so beautiful. And just the idea that, like, there is that much empathy among species, which you talk about in reference to other species, like, putting their butts out to, like, cover the ground. I know. Yeah. The wombats. Yeah. The wombats. Thank you. All of the things you taught the reader and showed the reader about animals and ecology and environmental everything, just tell me a little bit about that because at times, it felt desperate and sad. Right? And at times, it felt incredibly uplifting. So where do you come out on all of this?

[5:33]Charlotte McConaghy: Well, that's really good to know that it feels like that because I I guess that's what I'm going for. You know? I I just try to write about I feel like it's so easy to forget about all the extraordinary things that are in this world. And, you know, we get kind of insular in our lives and we sort of forget to to look out into the natural world and and and just really treasure these extraordinary things. So I like to include kind of beautiful, moments that really do exist in the natural world. And so, yeah, like you kind of referenced, I tell the story of a humpback whale and her calf and how, you know, there's a moment in the book where she launches out of out of the water and is falling down on on two of the characters. And, you know, maybe, just maybe, she's able to kind of turn herself when she sees them to save them. There's been so many recorded sightings of humpback whales showing incredible empathy to other creatures, not not of their species, which just is kind of so beautiful and amazing and really reminds you that that animals are capable of so much empathy and compassion and love and in ways that we sort of don't often remember. And as you referenced also, know, wombats are so beautiful. They're these gorgeous Australian creatures and they dig burrows and often in bushfires they will shelter other animals down in their burrows to keep them safe. And they put their they poke their little bums up to stop the fire from coming down. It's so beautiful. So, you know, there's so many stories of of courage and kindness like this in the animal kingdom. I just really like to try and always include them to show that that connection, you know, between everything and and the beauty.

[7:31]Zibby Owens: Wow. And even the whales on the beach. I won't even go into the whole thing, but just

[7:36]Charlotte McConaghy: I know beach whales are a real like thing for me. It's so heartbreaking. I feel like I I don't want to give away any spoilers but I also just want to like it's okay. They're they're okay. I I I don't wanna read books about whales dying on beaches. So Aw. I'll I'll give that spoiler away. They live.

[7:58]Zibby Owens: Aw. But the kids who are sort of helping in that effort, there's a moment where, you know, should they continue to help, what are they giving up if they if they continue on? But then there's this you know, the dad's like, well, they would have to live with not helping, and that's something too heavy to live with, which I feel like is another message. You know, it does feel like that. Like, what are we giving up when we stop helping others? And it's not just in animal kingdom. It's like the state of our world is just so terrible. And, you know, can we live with ourselves when we don't help our neighbors? Absolutely.

[8:32]Charlotte McConaghy: Yeah. Completely. That's a big part of this book is like, what are we willing to do? What are we willing to sacrifice? Because I think that that is what's gonna start happening now. We are gonna have to make some difficult choices about what how we live our lives. And, yeah it's you know they're not gonna be potentially I think to correct this ship we are not gonna be able to live the exact perfect way that we want to live we are gonna have to make sacrifices make some changes and

[8:59]Zibby Owens: a lot of people don't wanna hear that. They don't wanna do that. But I think, yeah, we've got no choice anymore. I mean, there are lot of things people don't wanna hear. So I think and honestly, the best way to spread any message is like one specific story that you completely relate to. I mean, that is more powerful than all the, like, save the environment posts. Yeah. Yeah. Like, you could look at a thousand posts and yet hear one story. This isn't even true, and it doesn't matter. It's like, okay. I got it now. You know? You know? Are true things in it. There are true things. So,

[9:31]Charlotte McConaghy: you know, like a lot of that kind of wildlife stuff is is from real stories,

[9:35]Zibby Owens: which I think all makes it all more kind of amazing. Well, I've read in the note, you said that the parts about the penguins and those canisters, oh my gosh, that was all real. And just the brutality of people claiming space for themselves and Yeah. How that happened with the the penguins and the seals and just oh my gosh. I know. So tragic. The the seals

[9:58]Charlotte McConaghy: were wiped out on this island. Like, whole population was gone from oil exploitation. Yeah. So we have a lot to answer for in our history. And I think, you know, the the the kind of slightly gothic haunted nature of this island is was my speaking to that and to what lingers on, you know, the things that we've done in the past, I think, do need to be answered for. And that kind of blood spilt doesn't ever just sort of disappear even if it is just of animals, you know. Yeah. There's a

[10:29]Zibby Owens: there's a scene in the book where you're able I'm trying not to give stuff away either, but I don't think this is giving it away. But anyway, there's a there's a scene where there's a certain chemical that can show blood underneath. Right? It's like a blue thing. I feel like that is the book. Like, you are the chemical bringing to life, like, a lot of the things that are under the surface that we're just not clearly seeing until we look more closely.

[10:54]Charlotte McConaghy: That's yeah. That's a really cool way of looking at it. Thanks. I just thought of that.

[11:00]Zibby Owens: There's a whole aside from this whole piece, there's love and loss and and our need to protect our kids. And Dominic's story is that he's a widower on this island with his three children, and his older children are helping take care of his, well, previous baby who's now, like, not a baby anymore, and how he copes with the loss of his wife whose whose words like, she is a character. In the movie, she'd have a part. Right? She's Yeah. Whispering to him and, you know, guiding his thoughts, and it's something he only can find a way to sort of process towards the end of this whole thing. But all those feelings of remorse and wishing you could go back in time to change things or doubt or all of that, like, that lost love, I mean, you did that so beautifully. It was so I mean, it just, like, it just really got me. Tell me about that and what you tapped into to to write all of that. Well,

[11:57]Charlotte McConaghy: I think, you know, this is I really wanted this to be a beautiful romantic love story between Dominic and Rowan. I'm a romantic at heart. I love love stories. I'm not necessarily saying this is a romance with a capital R, but it is definitely a big love story. And I think you can kind of, especially when you've got a character who's widowed, grieving, bereaved, you know, you can sort of forget that that has a profound impact and you know it's it's kind of you sort of want to brush that away and and let and enable them to sort of embrace the new romance. But I think for Dominic it's he's really he has so much unresolved trauma around the loss of his wife. Know it's complex how she passed away. So you know in I don't want to give that away but it's a complex difficult thing that he's carrying and he has a lot of guilt around it as well as you know simple missing his wife. So that I think that makes it really hard for him that guilt makes it difficult for him to process it properly And so he clings on to her as a means of survival. And wouldn't we all, you know? Like, he's out on this kind of really remote dangerous island trying to raise three children by himself. I mean, as a person with two kids, I can't even imagine that trying to do that. And there are many people in this world who do it and I'm just staggered by the kind of strength and fortitude that would take. And so he's coping with that. He's trying to kind of grapple with, you know, his own sort of shame around it. And so she manifests as this presence in his life as a way for him to sort of survive. But for as we we know with a lot of kind of wounded characters, the the the coping mechanisms they use only work for so long. And so it actually this becomes an albatross around his becomes a difficult thing for him to it stops him from kind of opening himself up to to love again. And I just I don't know. I I wanted the I wanted Claire, who's the who's the late wife, to feel she's also a complicated presence on the island because I think as a person alive, she was wonderful. Of course Dom loved her very deeply and the kids loved her very deeply. She was she was an amazing mother, kind of made the ultimate sacrifice. And and yet it's the sort of darkness and and bleakness of this island that's turned her into a sort of, you know, slightly frightening figure, especially for Rowan who doesn't know this woman. And it's not until we kind of get through the story that she, you know, comes to terms with this woman actually being kind of a a beautiful presence. Wow.

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[18:20]Zibby Owens: Well, I mean, a lot of it sort of comes down in the book to Dominic's strength. Right? His strength and ability physically and emotionally to deal with the kids, to deal with the island, the hazards of the island. And, honestly, in, like, one of the final thing, you know, it literally has to do with his strength and his ability to to do stuff, to save himself and the people he loves. Right? It all and I guess it's also a commentary on, like, after you've been wounded, maybe you never regain your full strength. Maybe you can't save everybody you wanna save in the world and love everybody, and maybe it's just you have to accept your limitations and and just try to navigate the scary world regardless.

[19:03]Charlotte McConaghy: Yeah. Yeah. I think absolutely there's there's a big part of that, you know. We don't always completely heal from our wounds, but certainly having the courage to kind of open up again to to new connections is is a big part of healing. And I think that's sort of, you know, a big part of what this book is about. Sort of it's about a lot of wounded people slowly realizing that they can kind of limp forward together.

[19:30]Zibby Owens: And you literally have a wound on Rowan that continue keeps opening. Like, in case we didn't get it, that this is about healing.

[19:39]Charlotte McConaghy: She you know? And the the slapstick, you know, he tries. Right? And he tries twice. And, you know. Yeah. There's definitely a theme throughout about bodies, you know, about our physical bodies and and what they mean to us and what they're capable of. And Dom, as you say, is very is a very physically capable person, which is very much like my partner. Morgan, I kind of modelled that a little bit on him. He's so clever at being able to just fix stuff and make stuff and do build things, you know, in a way that kind of yeah, it's amazing to me. And I wanted Rowan to also have have that. Like, I I think with with love stories you tend to sort of go for the opposites thing, which is lovely. But I for this one, I actually I really wanted her to kind of have that same just practical, you know, she's she can do stuff too. She can do heaps of stuff. She's just as capable as he as he is, and I had a lot of fun with that. I think in some ways, there's a little bit of an inversion in this sort of gender stereotypes between them. In some ways, she's the masculine, in some ways he's the feminine. So

[20:46]Zibby Owens: yeah, anyway. No, no, I loved it when like all of a sudden you're like, oh yeah, and she can figure out this concrete issue, and she can build homes and all the I was like, she what? She can? Okay. Great. By the way, I would argue that you can fix and build things quite powerfully with this book. It might not be, you know, planks of wood, but to build a world like this yourself out of your fingertips, really, that's pretty amazing.

[21:15]Charlotte McConaghy: Oh, thank you. That's a really nice way to to see it. Yeah. I guess it is creating a novel, isn't it? Creating a world and characters.

[21:23]Zibby Owens: Okay. Well, I'll tell him that next time. Yeah. I mean, can you know, who needs nails? Right? We have we have word and whatever else. Did you like, as I mentioned, like, I there was a scene in which I was crying, and I was, like, just feeling so physically moved by the book. When you were writing it, did you have all of those I mean, it's such a an immersive experiential type of thing with the with the the water and the salt and the you're, like, you know, wading through here and on the boats in the wind, like, and swimming, and I'm freezing all the time reading this book. You know, did you find yourself yeah. Tactile. That's a better word. Thank you. Did you find yourself, you know, in it and emotionally as you as you went, or were you able to keep a distance?

[22:11]Charlotte McConaghy: No. No. Of course. I'm so I you have to be in it to write it. Otherwise, nobody if I don't feel it you're not gonna feel it so I yeah I went deep I went really deep there were it was hard actually writing this novel was really hard probably the hardest one I've done to date. I mean, they're all pretty rugged. I don't know why I choose these incredibly sort of challenging things. But anyway, they do challenge me and but I think I come out the other side better for it. It's definitely me grappling with a lot of things that I feel about the world and lots of tears, you know. I had to go to Macquarie to kind of feel all the all the sensory things there and and to get that right because I I started writing the book a long time before it was due. And it just wasn't working. I was feeling really disconnected. I couldn't get the point of view right. I couldn't get like basic decision making. I was sort of struggling with. I didn't know whose story it was or how to tell it. I just was yeah. I was just disconnected. And it took me realizing I have to go to this island. I have to get there before it can feel real to me. And so we did. We we me and my partner and my baby at the time headed off on this insane sort of wild voyage down to to Macquarie Island, which is the island I base Shearwater on. And, yeah, it was just kind of a life changing trip. Just just an unbelievable otherworldly place. And I I realized, you know, there was there was textures and colors and sound. The soundscape was under I had I there was no way I could have imagined that soundscape. You step off the boat onto the beach, and it's like a wall of sound from these animals, from birds and seals and penguins. It's just amazing. So, yeah, all those kind of rich details I was able to to then bring to the novel and and, yeah, I'm very glad that it's kind of allowed it to feel immersive because that's, you know, that's the the main thing really. Oh my gosh. Well, I don't know. I mean, you said it could be a lot, you know, obviously,

[24:33]Zibby Owens: being a single parent or whatever. But bringing a baby onto an island like this? I mean, oh my gosh. I can barely, like, get, like, into a Yeah.

[24:43]Charlotte McConaghy: I know. I'd never do this again. It was really hard, but it was amazing. And thankfully, nothing went wrong. Like, honestly, what was I thinking? Like, before we went away, started to really panic and I you know, what what have I done? Because there's no there's no hospitals, obviously. You can't if something goes wrong, you're in serious trouble. There's a helicopter can maybe come, but, know, we would have to get to an island for it to be able to land and find us. And it's just like a lot of kind of scary scenarios were going through my head in the lead up to this and even just seasickness. We didn't know if he would cope with wild ocean and he can't medicate a baby and and day two we were out on the deep sea and it got really rough and I'm shocking I was sick to my stomach I couldn't stand up I was sort of you know like very close to vomiting very sick. And Finn did this huge vomit all over the the couch of this room. And I had this moment thinking I have to get him off this boat. What have I done? We're not gonna I can't have a baby who's sick to his stomach for two weeks without being able to help him. This is like I've made a terrible mistake. So I'm sitting in this shower with both of us swaying like washing the vomit off him and amazingly he was completely fine. Like he I don't know what that was. It was just a weird anomaly. He recovered completely. He wasn't sick for the for a single second of the rest of the trip. What a profound relief that was. I cannot tell you the terror that went through my mind in that moment. But it was really it was actually kind of an amazing way to get into Dom's headspace. I I mean, I know it's not the same having a like a seasick baby and having children on a, you know, a sinking island, but it was a really kind of good way to start thinking about, okay, well, how do you protect your children, you know, when you're you've kind of brought them somewhere that's quite dangerous. And and and yeah. It was a really good way kind of into his mindset.

[27:02]Zibby Owens: Well, we felt the terror. I mean, in worrying about the kids and all these different scenarios. Like, I wasn't even sure who to worry about the most. Yeah. But I have a new relationship now with the punching bag my son, like, never uses. We use it? Do we not use it? You know? Is it a good coping mechanism or not? I don't know. Amazing. And then you have, like, you have books themselves in the book, like the role of Jane Eyre in the book and trying to keep our stories from going down, essentially. Right? How do we keep our stories in one piece and retain our memories and all of that? I feel like that's that's like the last layer on top of this whole canopy bed of ideas.

[27:45]Charlotte McConaghy: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think that's kind of a natural state for people who are missing someone, you know. I know for myself when I miss miss people for a long time they start to fade from my memory and I've got a shocking memory actually like it's a it's a real thing for me. I I don't have a lot of memories from my childhood And so yeah, that notion of how do we hold on to things? Do we need these kind of these pieces of someone to break to keep them alive? Or are we able to kind of let those things go and still hold them within us? I'm not sure what the answer to that is, but Dom and Fender both have quite different feelings around that and that's the main source of kind of issue between them. In the novel, it's how do we grieve in a healthy way that's not kind of, I suppose, harming us even more.

[28:41]Zibby Owens: Have you read Broken Country by No. I haven't. Oh my gosh. You two have to meet. You have to meet her. There are a lot of similarities actually, even though the plots are totally different, like and they're both coming out really soon, and I have to, like, put the two of you in touch. Yeah. I would love that. I think you'll real you know, there's a lot of, anyway, I don't know. In my head, I'm like, you have to, like, sell them together or something. Anyway, there we go. Anyway, well, Charlotte, thank you so much for this fabulous read. And, you know, I was just talking in my office to someone who was like, oh my gosh. You're interviewing her, my friend Diana. And it was like she's like, I couldn't put it down. I like, I couldn't put it down either. So you have lots of lots of fans already. So congratulations. Thank so much. Alright. Thanks for everything. Thanks, Zibby. Nice to see you again. Okay. Bye bye. Bye. Thank you for listening to Totally Booked with Zibby, formerly moms don't have time to read books. If you loved the show, tell a friend, leave a review, follow me on Instagram at Zippy Owens, and spread the word. Thanks so much. Oh, and buy the books.