Debut Author Snapshot: Charlotte Rogan
Posted by Goodreads on April 2, 2012
The mother of triplets, Rogan turned to writing following a career in architecture and engineering. She is now working on her second novel. The Connecticut writer shares with Goodreads nautical images that inspired The Lifeboat.
Goodreads: You've said that you come from a family of sailors. Have you experienced any close calls at sea?
Charlotte Rogan: My husband and I own a little boat that we keep at my family's summer house in Maine. It is the same shape as the lifeboat in the book, but a lot smaller, and I love it because it is picturesque and graceful more than because it is particularly seaworthy. It was built by a local craftsman to both row and sail, but it is not very efficient with the sail up. It seems I can always get out of the cove, but the wind has to be just right for me to get back; often I end up rowing or waiting for the wind to change. So I have some experience with a boat that is hard to maneuver.
My family sailed together a lot when I was a child. I was too little to be of much help when the weather turned bad, and I remember looking nervously across a smooth expanse of calm water as the dark line of a gale approached and trusting that my father would know what to do when it reached us. He mostly did. I think it was those experiences of battling the elements surrounded by people who were stronger than I was that allowed me to imagine what those weeks in the lifeboat must have been like for Grace.
GR: This year marks the centennial of the Titanic sinking. How much did that tragedy serve as inspiration for the plight of your fictional transatlantic liner, the Empress Alexandra? How did your story idea originate?
CR: The Titanic was a wonderful resource for me as I wrote The Lifeboat, but I wouldn't really call it an inspiration. In fact, I protected myself from reading any personal accounts of the survivors because I didn't want them to affect how I saw my own characters. The Titanic was extremely useful, however, when it came to researching important details for the Empress Alexandra and for lifeboat 14.
For instance, the size of the lifeboat was of critical importance for me. Most of the Titanic lifeboats could hold 65 people, but 65 characters would have been far too many for both author and reader. The Titanic also had four collapsible lifeboats (capacity 47 people) and two wooden "cutters" (capacity 40 people). I modeled my lifeboat after the cutters but made the boats slightly smaller in order to make the boat overcrowded while keeping the character count manageable.
My real inspiration—the thing that caused me to put pen to paper—was coming upon an old criminal law text and reading about two cases involving shipwrecked sailors who were put on trial after they were rescued. I loved the moral dilemma, the idea that the law of society wasn't quite suited to people in extreme situations. I have always been interested in Thomas Hobbes and John Locke, 17th-century political philosophers who talked about the social contract—the bargains made when people give up some of their freedoms for security. Their work has modern-day implications for individual rights.
GR: The reader begins to notice clues that Grace Winter may be an unreliable narrator. How did you decide what to reveal, and with so many moral questions at play, how did you avoid passing judgment on your characters?
CR: I am interested in your phrasing of the question—you zero in exactly on the relationship between passing judgment and revelation. I think that if I had revealed everything that Grace did and didn't do, I would almost necessarily have come across as judgmental. The fact that we don't really know what she did or why is part of what allows us to engage so fully with her and her story.

This also gets at something of my process as a writer. Both the characters and the story develop organically for me. It is only through writing the story that I come to know my characters, and often I am surprised by what they decide to do. I remember being so excited when I first thought to myself, "Oh my goodness, Grace isn't telling the truth!" This was closely followed by the thought, "Well, who does?" And it is that line—between the usual sort of prevarication and a more extreme sort of lying—that I find so fascinating.
GR: What's next for you as a writer?
CR: I am superstitious about talking about my work, so I will only say that I am well into another novel, this one set in South Africa, where my husband and I were lucky enough to live for nearly a year.
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Jeff
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Apr 03, 2012 08:57PM

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Little bit harsh don't you think? Actually your comments have inspired me to watch Hitchcock's "Lifeboat"...I'll also read the book.




But it does sound remarkably similar to the movie and book and find it surprising that the author or reviewer did not mention it.







Re Lifeboat it is a good movie to watch. We can not be too quick to judge and form opinions before her book is read. One must be more sensitive and appreciate each persons creative work. I for one look forward to this book.


thank you jill - was wondering if ANYONE was going to actually READ this and post something positive as this thread seems to have gone off on a tangent. I LOVED this book and we have featured it in our bookgroup - so much to discuss! What about the 'theme - "Should women and children go first in emergency?"...that was interesting to discuss as Hardie sure saved those in Lifeboat 14! My sympathies for Grace wavered and I thought her quite calculationg...right from her marriage plans!!!! Thankyou for putting this thread back into positive territory!!

I saw the Hitchcock movie when I was a teen (many decades ago) and the book did not remind me much of the movie except for the setting.
I cannot wait to read what Ms. Rogan has out next.


Actually, Caroline, Life of Pi was also accused of being a copy-cat of someone else's idea (haha, no pun intended). In an interview back in 2002, the author freely admitted that the inspiration for his novel came from a story by one of Brazil's most respected authors, Moacyr Scliar. In Life of Pi, Martel tells the story of a shipwrecked Indian teenager who ends up in a lifeboat with a Bengal tiger after his ship sinks. In Scliar's story, a teenage Jewish boy is adrift in a boat with a panther after a shipwreck. According to the Guardian, Martel readily credits the story by Scliar, a doctor, as the inspiration for his novel, but says he only read a review of the book. "I saw a premise that I liked, and I told my own story with it," Martel said. So I think the tussle over whether Charlotte Rogan created an "original" work isn't as important as what she's done with it. If it holds up on its own, then I'm all for reading it.

King James Bible (Cambridge Ed.)
"The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun."

King James Bible (Cambridge Ed.)
"The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and ..."
Amen:-)



