Island Girl
by Lynda Simmons
February 2011 Book Pick

Book Club Discussion: Interview with Lynda Simmons, author of Island Girl

At the heart of Island Girl are a woman and her family who are struggling with the complexities of early onset Alzheimer's disease. Is this a disease that you personally have experience with, whether it be a family member or friend? What kind of research into the disease did you explore when writing this novel?

My mother-in-law was diagnosed with Alzheimer's fifteen years ago. A feisty little thing not five feet tall, she was the kind of woman who built backyard hockey rinks, took in stray cats, rescued baby squirrels and for years, made room in her home for forgotten kids. I think she would have gone on forever taking in those kids, but Alzheimer's changed everything, slowly but steadily stealing her memories, her personality, eventually even her ability to communicate.

While I understand exactly what people mean when they talk about Alzheimer's as the Long Goodbye, I also understand that this isn't the case for every patient. So when I decided to write Island Girl with Alzheimer's at the centre, I knew I couldn't simply rely on my own experiences with the illness. In order to get it right, I read books and watched documentaries, spoke to doctors and nurses, visited the Alzheimer's Association and sat down with the people who run the day programs for patients. While all of this was helpful in understanding the clinical nature of the illness, the way it attacks the brain and the pharmaceutical advances being made, my real insights came from talking with families and the patients themselves.

People often ask, "didn't you find it depressing to dig that deeply into such a horrible illness?" and the answer is yes. It was depressing and frightening and even now, if I forget where I've left something or can't think of a word, my stomach instantly tightens and my over-active imagination starts wondering if this is it, if Big Al has landed on my own front porch. But spending time speaking to people with Alzheimer's was also fascinating and enlightening. I learned that a lot is still going on in their minds and that they can express themselves much better by writing down what they want to say than they can in conversation. Less stress and more time to make sure they're saying what they mean makes all the difference. I also learned patience and the importance of human dignity, but the most surprising thing I learned was not to generalize when it comes to this illness.

I understand now that every brain is unique and therefore, so is every case of Alzheimer's. Certainly, memory loss is a constant, but beyond that, there are no absolutes. Progression depends on where the illness attacks, individual neuron activity, overall health, etc. etc. etc. As I said, there is no constant, and there is certainly no 'karmic gotcha' about Alzheimer's. It's an illness just as cancer or lupus or multiple sclerosis are illnesses. Alzheimer's doesn't discriminate, doesn't care who you are or how much money you have, or how good or bad you've been or what you have or haven't done with your life. I learned that Big Al is an equally opportunity thug and once he gets hold of you, there is no escape. Not yet, anyway. But who knows what lies ahead?

Island Girl interview with Lynda Simmons

Book Club Discussion: Interview with Lynda Simmons, author of Island Girl

I enjoyed the way you chose to have each chapter be written from the perspective of one of the three main characters, Ruby, Liz and Grace. Did you know right from the start that you wanted to approach Island Girl in this particular fashion or did it evolve this way over time? Was it difficult for you as the writer to shift gears between the different characters as you were writing? Was there one particular character who was easier to write than the others because you related to her more?

Ruby was originally a secondary character in another novel, but her story and personality were too strong and she quickly took over, pushing the main characters aside and forcing me to admit that she needed her own book. Because I have always enjoyed writing in the first person - becoming the character in much the same way an actor becomes the character in a play or a movie - I knew from the start that I would use that voice for Ruby. But as you mentioned earlier, Island Girl isn't about one woman's battle with Alzheimer's disease. Island Girl is story about family and friends, guilt and forgiveness, and the nature of love when hard choices have to be made. This meant that Ruby's daughters were going to need equal time to present their side of things. But Ruby's personality is so strong and her voice so strident, how could I possibly do justice to Liz and Grace if their mother was the one doing all the talking? That’s how the three first-person voices evolved.

With a fairly short deadline to finish the book, I didn't have the luxury of writing the whole thing in one voice, then writing it again in another. So I decided on the Ruby, Liz, Grace format and started in, switching from one character to another as I went along, all the while making sure that each woman's voice was distinct.

It was important to me that those three voices be clear, and that anyone reading the book would immediately know whose chapter it was, even without taking note of the chapter headings. That is where method acting and writing converged. I would immerse myself completely in being an Alzheimer's patient one day, then quickly shake her off and become an alcoholic the next, and a beautiful woman with the mind of a child the next. Then it was back to Alzheimer's, then alcoholic, and so on and so on.

Writing Island Girl was a little like being in a one-woman show inside my my head, complete with costume changes, makeup and someone hollering "Five minutes to curtain. Five minutes," every time I reached the end of a chapter. The characters became so real for me that one afternoon when I took an hour away from the keyboard to go to a Pilates class, the woman on the reformer across from me stopped half-way through the class and asked if I always travelled with an entourage.

Turned out she was a spiritualist and she was "seeing" the people around me.
"One of them is Rose, or Ruth," she said. "Do those names mean anything to you?"
I shook my head, wondering if I should call it a day at Pilates, when she added, "I see water all around her. You must know someone on a coast or an island with the name Rose or Ruth - "
"Or Ruby?" I asked.
She snapped her fingers and pointed at me. "Ruby, that's it. Ruby is here. Do you know her?"
Did I know her? Of course I knew her. I just didn't know who this spiritualist was.
The instructor got us back to working on the reformer and after the class I told this stranger that I was a writer and Ruby was a character. She wasn't surprised. She said this often happened, and went on to assure me that Ruby was pleased with what I was doing and wanted me to finish the book. Imagine my relief. What could be worse than a main character who doesn't like your book?

Whether the spiritualist really saw something or was just astute enough to pick up on the dark circles under my eyes and my twitchy demeanor (being in deadline hell is never attractive) it was clear that Ruby was the character I most related to in the story. While I have a deep respect for Liz and Grace and how difficult it was growing up in their mother's house, I have to admit that as a mother, my heart was, and always will be, with Ruby.

Island Girl interview with Lynda Simmons

Book Club Discussion: Interview with Lynda Simmons, author of Island Girl

One of the core issues that you spotlight in Island Girl is euthanasia and whether or not a human should be allowed the decision to end his or her life in a peaceful manner. This definitely made me think about the value of human life versus the personal choices we should be allowed within the legal system. Do you have a strong personal conviction regarding this topic or did you merely intend to bring this issue to the forefront of your reader's minds when reading the book? Do you foresee the laws ever changing in Canada in favor of euthanasia?

My mother-in-law has been in care for some time now, and it was in lounge at the long term facility that we got to know other families dealing with the same challenges we were. But what I found most interesting in talking to other caregivers was the differences in the ways the generations approached Alzheimer's. While those of my mother-in-law's generation, the ones who lived through the Great Depression and World War II, tend to be fatalistic about whatever life throws at them, taking a suck-it-up-and-soldier-on attitude toward the illness, people of my generation, the children of the revolution, are not at all ready to accept the Long Goodbye as their fate.

My generation has always fought authority, refusing to take the advice of experts, including doctors, on faith. So we read, we surf the net, we drink the pomegranate juice and we do crossword puzzles. And even as we watch our loved ones disappear and pray for a cure before Big Al comes looking for us, we are certain of one thing - we want a choice in our own future. Doctors will tell you that a good many Alzheimer's patients feel this way, but our laws as they are currently written don't permit assisted suicide, so what is a person to do?

This question, this dilemma, haunted me, especially when it came to those patients with early onset Alzheimer's. Those people in their fifties and sometimes their forties, who had been at the height of a career, or discovering the joys of life as an empty nester, or about to hold a first grandchild in their arms, all brought low by this vicious illness.

"He never wanted this," one woman told me, watching her husband shuffle back and forth between the nursing station and the lounge. "He wanted out long ago, but what could I do? I couldn't very well throw him in front of a subway train, could I?"

No, she couldn't. So now this man, proud and handsome judging by the pictures the staff has put in the cubby outside his room, is reduced to diapers and mushy food and a life that would likely have ended a while ago if Big Al had been left alone with him for a few days, but will now be prolonged by pharmaceutical cocktails and a medical system that cranks out graduates whose sole purpose is to keep him alive for as long as possible. Why? Beats me. Beats his wife too, but there it is.

I couldn't help it. I had to explore this issue. I wanted to take a character who is strong and independent and accustomed to being in control, and thrust her headlong into a situation that takes all of that strength and control away. A character who has not made good choices in her life, who has alienated lovers and friends and one of her children while all but smothering the other, and now finds herself needing forgiveness and compassion - something she was never good at herself - from the very people she pushed away.

These are the questions as I see them: Does Alzheimer's grant you instant forgiveness? Moral immunity? An ethical get-out-of-jail free card? And should you have the right to decide your own fate? Or should society decide it for you?

If I were writing non-fiction, I would take a stand and present facts and statistics to back up my point of view and expect you to be swayed by my arguments when you closed the book. But Island Girl is fiction, and the purpose of fiction is not to persuade or win an argument. The purpose of fiction is to explore human nature, to present you with two people who are arguing and both are right.

It's not up to me to judge the characters or their actions, to tell the reader who is right or wrong. It's up to the reader to decide for herself, and to think about the kinds of laws that will reflect this judgment

Island Girl interview with Lynda Simmons

Book Club Discussion: Interview with Lynda Simmons, author of Island Girl

According to Ruby, Grace has the mental capacity of a ten year old child. Yet the chapters written from Grace's perspective seem to convey a higher level of intellect. Did Ruby just turn a blind eye to Grace's full potential because she wanted to protect her daughter or was it because she needed full control of Grace's life? Do you think Liz had more faith in Grace's capabilities and that's what contributed to the tumultuous relationship between Liz and Ruby?

Both physically beautiful and mentally childlike, Grace was quite young when diagnosed with mild intellectual delay, but Liz has always believed the condition was exacerbated by Ruby. She may have been right, but to be fair, Ruby never did anything with malice. She only wanted what every mother wants - to keep her child safe. Too often, however, when a mother identifies one of her children as "the weak chick" she becomes over-protective, determined to make life easier for them at any cost.

Unfortunately, Ruby has been a lifelong member of the "weak chick" school of mothering. Her only goal was to make the best life possible for Grace. If that meant home schooling her, choosing a job for her and making sure the willowy blond never had to deal with boys and men, then so be it. There was nothing Ruby wouldn't do to keep her daughter safe.

No matter how many birthdays Grace celebrated, to her mother she was forever the little girl falling behind the class in reading, the one baffled by arithmetic, the one standing alone by the fence in the playground. Ruby saw only the weakness in her youngest child, never the potential, and was convinced, to the point of blindness, that everything she did for Grace was right.

As much as she would hate to hear it, Liz is just like her mother - equally convinced that she's right about Grace, and determined to prove Ruby wrong. It's just too bad neither of them ever asked Grace what she wanted.

Island Girl interview with Lynda Simmons

Book Club Discussion: Interview with Lynda Simmons, author of Island Girl

Did you have the ending to this story set in your mind from the get go? Did you ever grapple with the idea of choosing an alternative ending, and if so, why did you choose the one you did?

I usually know the ending of a book when I start. I don't know all the details or everything that will happen along the way, and if the ending changes somehow as I write the story, then I'm open to alternatives. I never want to force a story to go one way or another. I believe that honest fiction is not an oxymoron, and in order for that to be true the ending has to be natural, it has to feel real to the reader.

With Island Girl, I knew the ending I wanted. But when push came to shove, it was really about the ending Ruby wanted.

Island Girl interview with Lynda Simmons

Book Club Discussion: Interview with Lynda Simmons, author of Island Girl

I see in your bio that you started out writing in the horror genre. What made you decide to make the jump to writing about women and their relationships? Can you tell us a little about your first novel after this jump and where you came up with the storyline for it? Are there any parallels in the works of your two genres or are they completely separate facets of your writing?

I'm going to make a horrible admission here. I made the jump from horror to romance because the horror market was soft in the early nineties and romance was booming and I wanted to sell. Like every writer out there, I wanted to see my work in print because it's only when someone cracks the cover of a book and reads the words you've put on the page that the people and places you've imagined come to life.

I had long ago accepted that I was never going to make it in Canadian Literature. My style is too plot driven, too fast paced and unless I was willing to change completely, to tie myself in knots to become something I wasn't, it was never going to be Margaret, Margaret and Lynda. I have always believed that Shakespeare was right when he said, "To thine own self be true." So I tuned out the naysayers, embraced the mainstream writer inside me and turned my attention elsewhere. First to horror- because those were the stories that came first to mind - and then to romance.

How to make the jump? Well, in addition to writing, these days I also teach novel writing classes at Ryerson University in Toronto and Sheridan College in Oakville, and I always tell my students that the elements of fiction, just like the elements of music, are always the same. The elements of music are sharps, flats, notes, key signatures etc. etc. and these never change. B+ is always B+. It's what you do with the elements that determine whether or not your outcome is jazz, or hip hop or a symphony.

The same holds true in fiction. The elements are dialogue, viewpoint, setting, characterization etc. etc. and these things don't change. Again, it's what you do with them that give you a romance, a thriller, or a literary novel. It may be hard to believe, but the elements of horror and romance are not that far apart. So I turned my stalkers into sexy, intelligent white knights instead of sexy, intelligent socio-paths, made my strong and worthy heroes into strong and worthy heroines, and went back to hitting the keys.

I was not a romance reader when I started writing romance novels, and I honestly believe this worked to my advantage because I had no preconceived notions of what a romance novel "should" be. By stroke of luck, Silhouette was launching a new series or romantic comedies called Yours Truly. Because humour had always found its way into my writing - even the horror novels - Yours Truly felt like a good place to start.

I was happily married, but intrigued by the bloom of internet dating sites and advice columns for singles, and that was where the idea for Marrying Well, my first romantic comedy, was born. My heroine, Jeanne Renamo, was a columnist writing about the dating life under the pen name Lady Victoria Boulderbottom. The fictitious Lady Victoria had travelled through time only to surface in a dance club in Chicago where she happily shed her inhibitions along with her corsets, and started her exploration of the modern dating scene. The hero was, of course, the editor of the newspaper where Jeanne worked, and the story started with a simple bet between them that escalated into a full blown challenge, and the dawning of love.

I wrote six romantic comedies in all, and enjoyed every one of them, but I did feel boxed in by the necessity to always focus on the male/female relationship. Often, I was more intrigued by what was going on between the heroine and her mother, or her daughter, or her friends, than I was by what was going on between her and the hero. Honestly, sex can only hold my interest for so long. It was a little like always making dessert the main course, when really, I wanted a steak.

So I took a breath and another leap. Stopped writing romance and started writing mainstream women's fiction. Getting Rid of Rosie was my first step away, but Island Girl is the one that has taken me out of the relative safety of a genre shelf to the vast, dark woods of General Fiction where I have always wanted to be.

I don't kid myself. I know my book can get lost in there with all two copies shelved spine-out among the full facings of Rowlings and Kings and, yes, Atwoods. Ands sometimes I feel like a one man band with a drum in my hands, a harmonica in my mouth and cymbals between my knees. Oh look, it's the Lynda Show. Lynda Who? Beats me. Oh look over there! Here comes the Dan Brown Brass Band! Let's get a spot before it's too late.

I could easily learn to dislike Dan Brown. Where is a good stalker when you need one?

Island Girl interview with Lynda Simmons

Book Club Discussion: Interview with Lynda Simmons, author of Island Girl

Can you tell us anything about your current writing projects?

My new project is a historical, set between the Roaring Twenties and the Swinging Summer of 1967. I've never attempted a historical before, and the research is a little daunting. But both eras were times of extreme changes in the lives of women, and I am so looking forward to exploring both in fiction!

Island Girl interview with Lynda Simmons