Paperback, 320 pages
Published July 5th
2016 by Penguin Books
It’s an unusually rainy summer in Park Slope, Brooklyn, when
Lottie Wilkinson and Rose Arbuthnot spot a battered index card on their
children’s preschool bulletin board:
Hopewell Cottage
Little Lost Island,
Maine.
Old pretty cottage to
rent on a small Maine island.
Springwater, blueberries,
sea glass.
August.
Neither of them can afford to take a month away from their
spouses and kids, but one look at Hopewell Cottage online and they are smitten.
To share expenses, they find two unlikely companions to join them: Caroline
Dester, the damaged, beautiful darling of the independent movie scene, and
Beverly Fisher, a retiree recovering from a heartbreaking loss. Though they get
off to a rocky start, soon the four begin to relax into island life. And, as
the sea breeze works its magic, they rediscover the best versions of
themselves, and find, to their surprise, that they can indeed be happy, and
with the people they least expect.
My Thoughts…
A good summer read is what I was
looking for and that is exactly what Brenda Bowen gave me. The story of two moms, wives, and women who
rent a cottage in Little Lost Island, Maine and then invite two strangers to join
them to help offset the cost of the rent.
I loved the dynamics between the renters. The lifestyles could not have been more
different, the reason for escaping to Maine different, yet they worked
together. I enjoyed getting to know each of the 4
renters more as the book went on. The
fact that Brenda Bowen did not just give away the entire life stories of each
renter in the first few chapters and instead gave clues to them throughout the
entire book.
The setting of a small island off
Maine is gorgeous. I loved the
descriptions of the trails and the beaches.
I could picture the library and the other wonderful places that were
visited throughout the book. The
quaint places, the wonderful people they meet, and the experiences they have
all make this book the perfect summer read.
Book Links
“A charming, thoroughly engrossing novel that’s the next best
thing to being there.” —People
“Charming and witty. . . with a setting that could not be more
appealing—from the woodland fairy houses and twin turrets in the island cottage
to the rocky beaches and all-day lobster bakes. ENCHANTED AUGUST reminds
us that sometimes it just takes a change of scenery to reveal that love is
right in front of us.” —BookPage
“A frothy and fun retelling using a fictional Maine island as
the backdrop…It’s hard to argue that a small cottage on a large island would
not cure most of life’s challenges – if anywhere could, it would be this
fictional Little Lost Island.”—Portland Press Herald
About the Author:
Brenda Bowen is a literary agent. She lives in New York, and spends as much
of her summer as she can on an island much like Little Lost Island in
Maine. ENCHANTED AUGUST is her adult debut.
A
Conversation with Brenda Bowen,
author
of ENCHANTED AUGUST
(Penguin Books; on-sale July 5, 2016;
$16; 9780143108078)
Q: How did the idea
for ENCHANTED AUGUST develop?
In 1991, I saw the movie
Enchanted April, which transported me to Italy, a place I love, and made me
feel as if life could be very magical indeed, if only for a short while. It
wasn’t till the credits rolled on the movie that I realized it had been based on
a book, THE ENCHANTED APRIL, by Elizabeth von Arnim. I read the book, fell in
love with it; saw the movie again (and again), and loved it more each time. And
every time I saw the film or read the story, I felt: “This could be happening
now.”
For many years as an
editor and publisher and agent, I’ve given authors and artists ideas for books.
Usually the ideas are very vague, and the author then takes the idea and makes
it into a bona fide story. I was thinking about giving the idea of an updated
ENCHANTED APRIL to an author, so I started roughing out a story to see if it
could work. Then I kept going. And gong. And now…it’s a book under my own name,
which is thrilling indeed.
Q: Your book is based on a
90-year-old novel, which was made into an Oscar-nominated film. Did you feel
apprehensive taking on such a well-loved work? What are the differences between
your novel and the original ENCHANTED APRIL? Why did you move the story to
Maine, and to August?
I didn’t actually feel
apprehensive, though in retrospect I should have. THE ENCHANTED APRIL is a bit
of a well-kept secret: those who know it tend to adore it; but many do not know
it at all. The story seemed to be crying out to be replayed by women (and men)
who move in the modern world.
When I started the book,
it was called APRIL, ENCHANTED, and it took four bedraggled New Yorkers to an
island based on St. Lucia over spring break. I loved the idea of setting the
new book in the Caribbean because the colors and fragrances are so strong, as
they are in the von Arnim original. But I didn’t really know the place, in my
bones, so the manuscript didn’t work at all. Plus, I couldn’t imagine a
month-long spring break. I talked to my agent, the wonderful Faith Hamlin,
about my dilemma, and proposed to her that I take the characters to Maine,
where I’ve spent summers for many years. She said, “Yes, get them up to Maine
and leave them there a month, and then send me the manuscript.” So I did.
Q: You seem to have a great
affection for Maine. Have you spent a lot of time there? Do you have your own
“Hopewell Cottage?”
I do love Maine. I went
to Colby College, in Waterville, where I learned to tough it out in wintery,
inland Maine. I never even visited the coast of Maine till my last week at
Colby, and then, like everyone else, I fell in love with it. A friend of mine
has a family cottage on one of Maine’s thousands of islands, and I spent many
summers with her there in my twenties and thirties. Then I had a family, and we
started renting a cottage of our own. I have my own Hopewell, the place we go
year after year, though, like the characters in ENCHANTED AUGUST,
it’s only mine to rent. But that’s enough. “My” Hopewell doesn’t have two
turrets, but in every other respect it’s as charming, peaceful, evocative, and
breathtaking as the cottage in ENCHANTED AUGUST.
Q: Besides THE ENCHANTED
APRIL, what were your literary (or non-literary) influences while writing this
book?
I’m such a magpie: I
steal everything. So I’m influenced by the words and actions of people around
me. I just take whatever they say and put it into my stories. I love many of
the 19th-century writers: Jane Austen, Charlotte Bronte, E. M.
Forster, Henry James, J. M. Barrie. I’m not crazy about Dickens and I
can’t read Trollope (I’ve tried!). I love Philip Roth’s books: they are so
different from what I like to write but they are just what I like to read. I am
very influenced by movies – screwball comedies in particular. Mistaken
identities, mixed signals, tiny lies that turn into big trouble – those are the
stories I most adore. I go to the theater as much as I can. I like to hear the
sound of stage dialogue: like real life, but heightened. When I get stuck, I read
Mary Wesley.
Q: Could you talk about
your writing process? How did you get in the “Little Lost” mindset?
I spent three years
writing the first third of ENCHANTED AUGUST, and then – once I had a publisher
and a deadline -- six months writing the second two thirds. I do a lot of my
writing at the Hungarian Pastry Shop in New York City, where there is no wi-fi
and there are no electrical outlets. You can’t go online, and you can only use
your computer for as long as it keeps a charge. The computer I wrote the book
on only kept a two-hour charge, so I’d write for two hours and then stop,
wherever I was.
When I had to step things
up to meet the deadline, I’d do two writing sessions of 40 minutes each in the
very early morning before I went to work at 8:30AM. Then I’d write for a
half-day on Friday and as much time as I could on Saturday and Sunday. I also
spent most of August of last year finishing the novel on my own Little Lost
Island.
I generally put on
headphones to write. I play birdsong or sounds of the forest or the ocean as my
writing soundtrack. When I write a rainy scene, I play a rainstorm on the
headphones. I’m always shocked I’m not drenched to the skin when the scene is
done.
Q: You have spent many
years in the publishing world. What’s it like being an author, rather than an
agent or publisher?
This could be a really
REALLY long answer, or a short one, so I’ll go with the short one: I love being
an author. As Neil Gaiman says, “I get to make up stories all day and someone
pays me.” That is a great thing. I am grateful for every reader, every
bookstore owner, every librarian who touches my book. I know what it takes to
get a book to market and I am deeply appreciative of everyone who has a hand in
it.
Q: What would your perfect
summer day look like? If it includes reading, what would you read?
Start on a Maine island.
Get up early. Make coffee very quietly so as not to wake up the cottage. Heat
up a sticky bun from the farmer’s market; vow to eat only half. Sit on the
porch with coffee and sticky bun. Break vow. Watch the water. Pick up a book
from the cottage bookshelves and dip in. Go inside and realize three hours have
passed.
Put on some clothes, many
of which are the same as clothes worn yesterday. Walk to the other side of the
island in the sun. Watch the kids play tennis with the olds. Knit a little. Eat
something for lunch. Read on the porch: I am very susceptible to the latest
summer novel, or else I’m rereading a favorite classic like The Great
Gatsby or Vilette (great book; bad title). Or my
darling Mary Wesley. Notice there are no more sticky buns; bake a blueberry
cake for tomorrow.
Maybe take the boat into
town to get groceries. Go to a friend’s cottage to contribute to a communal
feast of a dinner, usually involving fresh fish on the grill and always
involving vegetables from the garden. Also involving pie. Eat. Talk. Drink.
Walk home under the stars with no flashlight, if it’s not too dark. Go to bed
early. Get up with the first bird and do it all over again.
Q: Will you write
another book about Little Lost Island?
A lot of readers have
asked me that question! Someday I'd like to write a book about Max and Kitty,
and their on-again/off-again romance. I love that they're from different worlds
but they've grown up together, and the possibility for conflict (and
attraction) there. But for now I'm at work on another, very different novel.
More on that to come....
Q: If you could have your own Hopewell Cottage who would your
ideal houseguests be? They can be living or deceased.
NOTE: Shakespeare would get a whole summer of his
own.
Fellow writers:
Elizabeth von Arnim
Mary Wesley
Jane Austen, though I fear the journey would tire her
Mary Shelley
Charlotte Bronte
(I’d save Philip Roth for a winter retreat – too bracing for a
summer cottage)
In the drinkers’ corner:
Jimmy Joyce
Dylan Thomas
Richard Burton
So that we’d have some artists to go with the scribblers:
Henri Matisse
Toulouse Lautrec
Rogier van der Weyden
Modigliani
And some photographers to go with the artists:
EJ Bellocq
Weegee
Walker Evans
Dorothea Lange
For my husband:
Samuel Johnson
For me:
Rafa Nadal
Musicians:
Dave Frishberg
George & Ira Gershwin
Fanny & Felix Mendelssohn
Ella Fitzgerald
Louis Armstrong
João Gilberto
On the grill:
Bobby Flay
Bobby Flay
At the stovetop:
Julia Child
Mrs. Beeton
More writers:
P.G. Wodehouse
Jonathan Ames
Gary Shteyngart
Maria Semple
Hollywood types:
Billy Wilder
Preston Sturges
Emma Thompson
Richard Curtis
I. Freleng
Around the fire:
Garrison Keillor
W. B. Years
Ira Glass
Moony poet:
Johnny Keats
Johnny Keats
My New York friends
My island friends, especially the more eccentric
My beloved family
That’s it for one summer.
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