Interview: Nadia Aguiar, author of “The Lost Island of Tamarind”

Nadia Aguiar is the Bermuda-based author of The Lost Island of Tamarind. Read a review of this book here and enter to win a free copy of the book.

Q. I read that you began The Lost Island of Tamarind during your MFA program at Columbia. Did it start out as a short story?
I first had the idea—a family who lives on a boat, the storm, the island—the year after I finished the program at Columbia. It was always going to be a novel. I wrote a few passages of the first chapter but then the idea was shelved for two or three years because work and life were so busy. A few years later the idea was still vivid, and when the opportunity to devote some real time to it arose, it was full steam ahead.

Q. Setting is such an important element of Lost Island of Tamarind. You’ve created a lush imaginary world, an island that exists in a lost part of the world. How did you go about creating this world? Did it develop as you continued with your writing or did you map it out prior?
I don’t map much out in advance. I have to actually be writing before I can really see anything in the world of the book for the first time. Once I start writing, I feel like I’m actually physically in the world in a sensory way—seeing and hearing and experiencing everything there.

Q. You’re from Bermuda. What aspects of your childhood seeped into the writing of this book?
The sounds, smells, heat, the ocean—all these made their way into Tamarind in a way that I don’t think they would have if I’d been from elsewhere. The natural world is very powerful and beautiful here, and magical things are part of ordinary days. We really do have glowing sea creatures, and all you have to do is spend an afternoon on the ocean to discover something miraculous. Also, I don’t think that I could have written about siblings as easily if I didn’t have so many of my own—that dynamic of bickering but really loving each other, and sharing childhoods with one other, is very familiar to me. Finally, Tamarind is a variation of my greatest childhood fantasy—to be shipwrecked on a deserted island … hardly imaginative for a kid who grew up on an isolated island!

Q. Fantasy, adventure, and historical fiction seem to blend in this novel. Who are the writers you read while growing up?
I read voraciously but indiscriminately—everything from Madeleine L’Engle to Archie comics. I read a lot of Enid Blyton, a popular and prolific English writer of children’s books who was read widely in Britain and in many parts of the Commonwealth. Looking back on those books now, there are many unsavory features (jingoism, sexism, etc.), but what still stands out as being great and memorable about them was that there was always an exciting adventure and a group of friends who were all thrillingly autonomous for children. These are things that I think young readers really respond to. Some of the most wonderful books that I remember reading again and again, and that I still enjoy returning to now, are From the Mixed Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler (E.L. Konigsburg); The Egypt Game (Zilpha Keatley Snyder); Charlotte’s Web (E.B. White); The Indian in the Cupboard (Lynne Reid Banks); A Wrinkle in Time (Madeleine L’Engle). Roald Dahl’s books had place of their own—I still have a beloved, battered old copy of The Witches. I loved Narnia, and I reread the opening pages of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe over and over again just to get to the moment when Lucy’s hand reaches out and touches not the fur coats but snow. I loved how creepy and disorienting The Phantom Tollbooth was. I was addicted to series—everything from Nancy Drew to The Babysitter’s Club to Sweet Valley High. (I knew that different authors wrote Sweet Valley High and I used to write descriptions of the twins—I came up with a hundred different ways to describe their aquamarine eyes—and prepare writing samples to send to the publishers.) In the eighth grade I decided to read only long books, like It and Gone With the Wind, along with a lot of things that make me cringe now—truly tawdry, scintillating books like the V.C. Andrews series about four children locked in their grandmother’s attic. They were wonderful. No one paid much attention to what I was reading, so I was free to develop a love of reading and gradually made my way to better and better books as time went on.

Q. What role did research play in the writing of this book? Do you have a science background? If not, did you turn to someone or some particular source to figure out the scientific nuances of what you were writing or did you give yourself a license to just make it all up?
One of the things I hope that the book will do is to get kids excited about science and the natural world, and I was best able to do this by giving myself some creative license. I’ve always been fascinated by science as a way to discover how the world works and to make sense of it. Though I didn’t study it beyond high school, I read a lot of popular science books and magazines, visit science museums and libraries, and talk to scientists and teachers whenever I can. I spend hours watching science programs on DVD, too. I like to be outdoors as much as I can, on land and in the ocean, observing plants, animals, rocks, the weather, and how it all fits together. Aspects of the real world ends up as a starting points for ideas that get developed imaginatively in the books, so that there’s always a blend of science and magic.

Q. Who are your favorite characters in this novel?
I love the Nelson kids—Maya, Simon, and Penny. I have a lot of empathy with Maya, who isn’t a natural optimist and has to work to keep her spirits up. She shoulders the burden of caring for the others and finding their parents and this isn’t easy, but she shows real courage and fortitude and growth as the book goes on. I love Simon’s irrepressible spirit and energy and his natural likeability. Penny is cool—how many babies would be as accommodating while being carted around a hot, steamy jungle? And Helix is this heroic, self-made boy with a dark, troubling past. We learn a little about it in the first book and it’s something that will continue to be worked through in subsequent books, when it will become a key part of the plot. There’s a lot to explore with Helix—he’s had a far more complicated and painful life than the others. Granny Pearl is one of my favorites—she represents home, goodness, safety, warmth, love. Valerie Volcano is the most haunting and tragic character to me—she lives inside the prison of her fear, a prison she built herself, and there are few worse things to see.

Q. Did you plan to write a novel for younger readers or did you just fall into it? What’s different about writing for adults versus children?
I wanted to write the kind of book that I loved reading when I was a kid, when I read because I had to know what happened next, when I wanted to be friends with the characters and be there in the story with them, when I was first discovering the pleasures of language and it was exciting and new. So, more than writing for children I wanted to write for anyone who wanted to feel that way. Because it was about children and it was a fantasy adventure, I knew it was a children’s book, but beyond that I didn’t give much thought to whether I was writing for kids or grownups.

Q. This is part of a trilogy? 
I’m the eldest of four children, and growing up, we were VERY concerned with everything being fair. Everyone had to have a turn, and if someone tried to mess with whose turn it was my mother would practically have to turn a hose on us to stop the fighting. While The Lost Island of Tamarind is about all the Nelson children, it’s really Maya’s coming-of-age story. So it seemed only fair to me that if Maya had her own story, Simon and Penny should have their own, too, Simon’s in the second book and Penny’s in the third.

Q. What’s great about living a writer’s life on the island of Bermuda? What’s difficult?
Right now I’m able to write full-time, which is incredibly lucky. I think it would be amazing to do this almost anywhere, but the things I experience in Bermuda feed naturally into the world of Tamarind in a way that, say, life in a city wouldn’t. I do miss urban life, though, and writing is lonely work, but this would be true anywhere.

Q. What was the process like getting this book published? Were there artistic sacrifices you struggled with to achieve commercial acknowledgement?
I found a really great agent and we had immediate synergy—unbeknownst to me before I sent her the manuscript, she is a sailor, has been to Bermuda many times, and has three kids. I revised the book based on her suggestions and then she sent the manuscript to editors. I was incredibly fortunate to have it picked up by strong editors and publishers who really believed in the book. I didn’t make any artistic sacrifices—I wrote the book I wanted to write.

Q. Do you consider yourself a fantasy writer? science fiction? adventure? All? None of the above?
I think that The Lost Island of Tamarind is a quest, and like many quests, it has adventure, fantasy, and coming-of-age elements. I don’t consider myself any particular type of writer, though.

Q. How old are you? Where else have you lived besides Bermuda?
I’m 30. I was born in Bermuda and lived here until I was eighteen, when I went to university in Canada for four years. After that I moved to New York where I lived for six years. I was in London briefly before returning to live in Bermuda a year and a half ago.

Q. Are you glad you spent time in an MFA program? Would you recommend it to other writers?
Being in the MFA program at Columbia ended up having a huge impact on my life and continues to shape aspects of it even now. It enabled me to go to New York. I have many writing colleagues from the program—something that’s important when you’re out writing on your own later on—who are also dear friends. It opened the door to work opportunities that were valuable in the years after I graduated. I can’t not recommend it to people—at the same time, it’s hard to encourage someone to spend the amount of money that most MFA programs cost. I would advise people thinking about it to apply to a number of different programs, and then see what options are regarding tuition costs, grants, fellowships, and other sources of funding, as well as how what kinds of outside jobs the course schedule allows you to have.