Novel explores ‘green, beautiful and comfortable’ Manawatū
Miriam Sharland’s first novel is not what she originally planned to write.
But 2020 was a game changer for society and Sharland.
A migrant from London, she had a desire to return home to England after spending 17 years in New Zealand, all of that time in Manawatū.
However, Covid put a stop to those plans in 2020.
So while she faced lockdown alone in her home in Palmerston North, Sharland began writing. First it was just a daily journal, a place to let her thoughts out. Then it became something more.
The result, her first novel, Heart Stood Still, is a combination of essays and reflections, a lyrical portrait of Manawatū and nature and what it felt like spending lockdown by oneself.
Set to be released on April 22, the novel is part of Otago University Press’s Ka Haea Te Ata series; a series dedicated to casting light on issues of importance in Aotearoa today.
Sharland said the novel was not just about lockdown, although it was set in the year 2020.
“One of the things I just sort of wanted to be really careful about was it not being seen as just a lockdown book or just a Covid book.”
While Sharland initially found lockdown confronting, it ended up being a positive experience.
“I did have more time and I had the freedom to go out and explore, you know walking or on the bike, sometimes someone would take me somewhere and [I] had a real chance to explore the area that I lived in.”
Sharland always had a “vague” idea that one day she would write a book, but admitted she was “really not good” at writing fiction.
Instead, non-fiction and nature writing was the form that came naturally to her. “Writing where it’s about the narrator, as much as it’s about nature. So it’s a journey that they’ve made ... a metaphorical journey or a real journey.”
She warned there was a lot of gardening in the book, a passion that’s strengthened over the years as the climate crisis had grown and she had got older.
It was a calming space throughout lockdown, a place where Sharland could “stick my hands in the soil and just feel really kind of calm and grounded”.
The book is made up of 12 essays, all interconnected and separated into the four seasons. It reflects on Sharland’s feelings about being away from her family and how it felt to be a migrant. “What started out really as a sort of garden diary, nature diary, became a much bigger exploration of how it felt to be a migrant and the sort of unsettled feelings that I’d had for quite a long time.”
Sharland hoped the book would allow readers to reflect on their own experience during 2020 and said while she met many people who undervalued Palmerston North, she found the place “really beautiful” and “comfortable”.
When asked how she would describe Manawatū, Sharland said it was “green, beautiful and comfortable”.
Her book she described as “lyrical, nostalgic and hopeful”.
Heart Stood Still will hit bookshelves on April 22 and will be launched at Palmerston North City Library on May 9, when Sharland is back in New Zealand.