Allegra Goodman’s ISOLA is Reese’s Book Club’s February Pick
Reese Witherspoon, Courtesy of Instagram.
Reese Witherspoon announced on Tuesday that the Reese’s Book Club February pick is ISOLA (The Dial Press), the new novel from Allegra Goodman, nationally bestselling author of SAM. Inspired by the real life of a sixteenth-century heroine, Isola is the gripping story of a woman fighting for survival after she and her lover are marooned on an island.
The novel was named a most anticipated book of 2025 by TIME, Vogue, People, Town & Country, and many more.
Allegra Goodman. photo credit Nina Subin.
Of ISOLA, Witherspoon said: “Isola by Allegra Goodman has it all: love, resilience, defiance… I mean, she even fights a bear! This is one of my favorite historical fiction reads yet.”
ISOLA also received raves from The New York Times Book Review and The Washington Post this week, both below:
“I was enthralled, first to last…What may be most wondrous about Isola is its seamlessness. All its elements — style, tone, setting, characters, historical accuracy — render a richly real world, graphic and palpable, from aristocratic estate life to most-wretched human suffering. Its language and dialogue — completely plausible for its era — together with relentlessly vivid physical details (lice, tooth extraction, banquet delicacies, wild foraging, dressing habits) cohere to swallow us whole…the blazing action on each page — Marguerite’s shrewd deploying of tactics for her own salvation — reminds readers to place our money on the power of human female ingenuity.” –The Washington Post
“A work of tremendous imagination that draws on harrowing historical records to spin a story of self-determination, courage and faith… Goodman is as resourceful as her heroine in developing Marguerite’s interior life; she conjures sublime expressions of nature that sustain Marguerite even when her faith abandons her. I imagine the author shares the view of the queen in Isola, who tells Marguerite, ‘Those who have endured the worst have most to teach.’”
–The New York Times Book Review