The new novel from the author of Saltblood again traverses the high seas, this time inspired by a real-life Scottish adventurer.

When they leave me on the island, I do not scruple to beg. I chase the last boat into the bay, wading and shouting, ‘Sir, sir, mercy, have mercy, you will not leave me here to die?’

They do leave him, but he does not die.

Only when he is interrogated by the cat and the goat does he finally tell us exactly what happened, and why. Meanwhile, Alexander Selkirk begins to tell us, as the frontispiece proclaims:

The TRUE and SURPRISING ADVENTURES of ALEXANDER SELKIRK, of NETHER LARGO, SCOTLAND: Who survived many years, all Alone on an un-inhabited Island far from the Coast of SPANISH AMERICA; Having been cast on Shore by his SHIPMATES, Abandoned with only GOATS and CATS for company in a Savage Landscape. WITH An account of his TRIALS at the hands of said Island.

Written by Himself.

Interrogated by a cat and a goat? To be precise, by Sleek, the cat, and the Reverend Vicarious Cronch, the goat. How did that happen?

He wonders who ‘in this remote and God-forsaken place’ could have taught the goat to speak, and whether his own habit of speaking to them, and muttering to himself, could have done it. Whatever the explanation, Sleek and the Reverend Vicarious Cronch are company, even if Sleek is aloof and has a sharp tongue, and Cronch speaks plainly and concisely but is inclined to philosophical and religious utterances.

‘You must understand one further thing,’ says Selkirk:

If I doubt what is happening I deny myself the prospect of company … If even the meanest creature spoke to me – a clam; a slug; a rat – I would welcome his voice, rapt with attention.

The cat and the goat are a delight. They are curious and full of questions about how he came to be on the island. ‘My past is not a story I wish to tell,’ says Selkirk, but it is to gratify them and to have a listener ‘as attentive’ as the Reverend Vicarious Cronch, that he begins to tell it.

In an ‘Historic Note’ at the end of the book, Francesca de Tores says:

This novel sticks closely to the facts of Selkirk’s life, inasmuch as these have been recorded (with varying degrees of reliability) … Selkirk’s voyage with Dampier, his abandonment and survival on the island, and his rescue, are all drawn closely from contemporaneous sources.

De Tores’ Selkirk, however, is a wonderfully imagined character full of self-doubt, humour, hope, despair, and invention. So, too, are the goat and the cat, and other characters who appear in his story.

 He starts with his childhood, his ‘plague’ of older brothers, his ‘doting mother’ and ‘censorious’ father. He also talks about Effie, the young woman he had ‘left behind without so much as a farewell’. Having run away to sea, he discovers that he is a good sailor and has a ‘prodigious’ memory; when the master of his first ship discovers his interest in navigation and teaches him, he loves it. He becomes ‘a fair navigator’ – so good that when the second mate on the ship dies, he, ‘at barely eighteen’, is appointed in his place.

By 1698, he has been at sea for three years. During this time, England has been at war with France, and there is plenty of work for the navy, and for privateers, both part of his story. But war and failed harvests have left Selkirk’s fellow Scots starving. Seeing the profits being made by the English East India Company, they decide to set up the Company of Scotland Trading to Africa and the Indies and mount an expedition to start a colony where a profitable enterprise may be established. The destination of the expedition, and where the colony is to be, remains unknown for fear the French or the Spanish might get there first, but the Scottish people raise funds, many currently unemployed officers and soldiers are keen to go, and five ships set off with a large number of people aboard. Selkirk sails on the Caledonia, under Captain Drummond, and he is proud to be part of this enterprise.

The destination is the isthmus of Darien, the narrow strip of land joining north and south America. This is seen to be ‘the key to unlock the Atlantic’ that will allow trade to avoid having to go round Cape Horn. But for many reasons – climate, sickness, poor provisioning – this enterprise fails. In a skirmish with the Spanish, who have occupied a nearby village, Selkirk kills a man. This is one of the deaths for which he feels remorse.

He is eventually left on the island with just his sea-chest, a Bible, a flint and steel, a small sack of flour, a cask of ‘flip’ (which is soon drunk), a musket, some powder and a few bullets. He scavenges two broken barrels and some torn sailcloth, and he eats goat-meat (the goats are easy to catch), some seal (which he dislikes), native cabbage, turnips and berries. He then traps some kid-goats and ties them up so that he can capture the mother and milk her.

Daily, he visits the lookout he has set up on the island’s one hill to scan for boats. But a ship-sighting is not always good news. If he were to be captured by the French or the Spanish, he would be either killed or taken as a prisoner of war. Two of the ships he does sight are a potential danger to him.

The island is overrun with rats, feral goats and cats, and the rats eat everything and even attack him when he falls asleep. To deter them, he steals a kitten and tames it. This is not Sleek, who is a wild tabby who comes to lap up the blood when he slaughters goats. The goat, too, watches him closely and is too old to be good eating.

He survives illness, accidents, a desperate attempt to escape on a raft (in spite of knowing this was doomed in one way or another), and bouts of depression, but when Sleek and the Reverend Vicarious Cronch start to talk to him, there is companionship, as well as humour, good advice and dry comment.

‘If you were better at being a man,’ says the cat, ‘you would not mistake yourself for a god.’ …

The goat chews on a pimento leaf. ‘It seems to me that most troubles come from being what you are not. Me? I excel at being a goat, and thus have few troubles – excepting worms, of course, which are the curse of every goat.’

‘They are the curse of sailors, too,’ I say, ‘though in a different way.’

‘They do not make your arsehole itch?’

‘They eat boats. The Cinque Ports most especially.’

Having been brought up in a small village where the minister instilled ‘godly nature’ into his parishioners, Selkirk reads his Bible frequently, then he begins to pass the time by blackening lines of text with a piece of charcoal. He tells himself that having exhausted the Bible stories, he is entitled to make up some of his own. Worried that the goat might see this as sacrilege, he suggests that this is an act of devotion or prayer. When the goat suggests it is a form of divination, he tells him that ‘Some people claim they can tell the future from bones, or from guts,’ and he reads one of his attempts to them.

‘You would do better with bones,’ says Sleek.

When Sleek and the Reverend summon him for trial, he is not very surprised. And what they draw from him are things he has done that he has hidden from himself, including the things that eventually led to him being left on the island. His sense of remorse has been evident all along, and his religious upbringing has caused feelings of guilt. In the Prologue, he asks:

Can a man crack the shell of himself like a crab, and cast off his scoundrel nature, to reveal the fleshly goodness within? I fear it is not so simple, though I would wish it so. Against what do I crack myself open? Against this island, its unyielding stone. Against time, which neither budges nor softens. Against my memories, sharper than the rocks.

It is Sleek and the Reverend Vicarious Cronch who help him to resolve this dilemma. And, in doing so, his story (as told by Francesca de Tores) becomes a fascinating and absorbing account of his life on the island, as well as a revelation of his character. Perhaps Sleek and Cronch are the hallucinatory imaginings of a man suffering the mental and physical effects of long isolation on an island, but whatever they are, it is a pleasure to meet them.

Francesca de Tores Cast Away Bloomsbury 2026 PB 336pp $32.99

Dr Ann Skea is a freelance reviewer, writer and an independent scholar of the work of Ted Hughes. She is author of Ted Hughes: The Poetic Quest (UNE 1994, and currently available for free download here). Her work is internationally published and her Ted Hughes webpages (ann.skea.com) are archived by the British Library.

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