Memorial Park features in Miriam Sharland's eco-memoir Heart Stood Still. Photo / Judith Lacy
Memorial Park features in Miriam Sharland's eco-memoir Heart Stood Still. Photo / Judith Lacy
When the pandemic hit New Zealand in 2020, Miriam Sharland’s heart fluttered with homesickness and tough choices.
She had planned to return to her native England to research a book about her uncle. Bob Sharland, her father’s older brother, was a rear gunner in RAF Bomber Command during World War II. He was shot down in a raid over Germany and killed with his whole crew three weeks after his wedding. Bob was just 21.
Sharland, a web editor at Massey University, decided to remain in her adopted Palmerston North.
Her first book, eco-memoir Heart Stood Still, came out of her Master of Creative Writing at Massey and a journal she kept during the pandemic. The book explores belonging and Manawatū, which Sharland comes to see in a different light.
In its 12 chapters, Sharland asks what have we learned from the pandemic and the way we engage with nature and the environment. Have climate change and environmental destruction changed the way we live?
Sharland enjoyed the peace and quiet of the lockdowns and being able to ride her bike in safety. She also appreciated the strong sense of community, and the time to slow down, pause, reflect and think about how we were living.
“I thought it’s so lovely with everybody walking and cycling and saying hello to each other and there’s not loads of traffic and there’s not loads of noise. We all thought maybe we should slow our lives down a little bit and then just practically overnight everything just went back to how it had been before.”
She felt depressed about how people hadn’t retained these things in their everyday lives.
Underlying Sharland’s homesickness was worry about her mother Carole, who has a non-cancerous brain tumour, and uncertainty about when she going to be able to see her.
A rainbow arcs over the ranges. Emerald grass, a chestnut horse, a glossy black cow; far off in the field of cauliflowers, a red tractor like a toy left by a giant child. The white wind turbines spin on the ridge. Rows of tiny celery plants resemble neat green embroidered sprigs on brown fabric.
Sharland says New Zealanders tend to underestimate Manawatū's beauty. It perhaps suffers from comparison with those places with awesome scenery but has a green, friendly beauty.
“It’s not a towering, crag snowy peak, it’s green fields and the ranges.”
The 57-year-old advises budding writers to expect to work hard.
“It’s work, it’s not just inspiration that comes out of nowhere and suddenly you have written a book.”
Her second piece of advice is to read widely around your subject to look at how other authors have approached what you are trying to do.
The final structure of Heart Stood Still was inspired by Katherine Swift’s The Morville Hours. Her chapters are structured like a medieval Book of Hours.
One of the things Miriam Sharland enjoyed about lockdown was being able to ride her bike in safety. Photo / Judith Lacy
Books were a big part of Sharland’s Surrey childhood. She always got a new book at Christmas and birthdays and remembers her family would listen to a vinyl LP of Alice in Wonderland her father would put on.
She had great teachers at school who encouraged her writing and Carole has always been a great reader.
Sharland was worried about how mother, two sisters and brother would react to Heart Stood Still but all have been supportive of the sharing of Sharland family history.
In the woods, the smell of pines was intense. People say pine smells fresh and antiseptic, like cleaning fluid, but to me it was a festering, earthy scent of fallen branches, damp black leaves and decaying pine needles that signified a dark and slightly mysterious place, haunted by the ghosts of previous generations. That smell was the backdrop to Dad’s life.
Carole told Miriam, who is her middle daughter, the memoir made her cry and laugh. She strenuously objected to being called old (she’s 84) and likening sparrows to Cockneys (she is one) due to the perception Cockneys are chatty and common.
Heart Still Stood is published by Otago University Press.
“OUP were really great to work with, they were fantastic, a really great experience working with [publisher] Sue Wootton and her team,” Sharland said.
Heart Stood Still was launched last month by Ingrid Horrocks, who supervised Sharland’s master’s thesis.
Horrocks said the book is a heart-warming love story to Manawatū and like a good garden all parts support each other. It is an intimate memoir yet constantly reaching out to the world
Sharland has returned to her book about Uncle Bob, tentatively titled The Path Finder.
In 2022, she cycled around the UK visiting all the bases he was stationed at during the war. The book will be a mix of her journey and his journey and how his career progressed until his death in 1944.
She started working on the book in 2015.
Bob Sharland, Miriam's uncle, aged 19.
Judith Lacy has been editor of the Manawatū Guardian since December 2020. She graduated from journalism school in 2001, and this is her second role editing a community paper.
