An Inspirational Novelist

By Nilma Dole

Meeting the sensational writer who was acclaimed a Granta’s Best Young British Novelists’ in 2003, Susan Elderkin is a passionate author with a purpose.

She is a writer who has been very much in tune with nature and explains “Human being are formed by the land that they grow up in”. A visitor to Sri Lanka for the first time, the British Council brought her earlier this year to participate in the Galle Literary Festival.

Susan was born in 1968 and she lives with her family in Leatherhead, Surrey.

She had a peaceful childhood and her father tended the home garden by growing their own vegetables. She reminisces “I always had my hands in the soil”.

During her early education, a teacher advised everyone to ‘write what you know’ but Susan wanted to discover and write the unknown.

She does point out that writing about what one knows is easier since you are well-versed in the subject. Susan has studied English at the Cambridge University, has learnt the creative art of writing at University of East Anglia and is a Curtis Brown scholarship winner.

Her first wave of inspiration struck her when she stood on a gravel boulder at the Joshua Tree National Monument in Arizona, USA and she nostalgically remembers “I had a sense of epiphany when I stood on the boulder and watched the red earth stretch for miles”.

He first novel ‘Sunset Over Chocolate Mountains’ won her the prestigious Betty Trask award and it is a story about Theopold Moon who gives up a cosy life in England to come to the arid desert of Arizona in USA with his daughter.

As fate may have it, a European immigrant couple changes their destiny. The way Susan elaborates about the two distant worlds, the hot versus cold, the dry versus wet all sums up the real climate change situation.

She emphasizes that being a Climate Change write is definitely a challenge because it is impossible to actually say what you mean in definite terms. Her second written effort ‘Voices’ speaks of a boy called Billy who develops a special bond with an Aboriginal girl and a passage of culture is made. The girl but finds it difficult to pass it because she isn’t sure of her own culture.

Susan is currently working 0n a new novel about a fictional community in a sub-zero northern region where temperature rises and the ice melts in turn triggering an emotional thaw among inhabitants, releasing them from inhibitions.

She says that her next novel will have strands of real stories pertaining to the environment and it will revolve around the loss of habitat much like the losing of endangered species.

She says that natural calamities are acts of God and human beings are always motivated to adapt to the changing environment. Susan believes that while “others can adapt to Climate Change, others find it difficult”.

Speaking about her Galle Literary Festival involvement, she points out that “Travel is a good thing and it would be sad if there was no travel.

Considering the fact that computers have changed our worlds” she comments “a prototype for a solar-powered plane has already been developed”.

As she bridges the gap of Sri Lanka with the world about climate change she notes that “People should live sustainably”. She advises of finding ways and means of thinking and working economically, in an environment-friendly way and highlights a better understanding about how best to use alternative energy sources.

“Doing little things if being economical go a long way as the solution to the Climate Change problem” were her parting words. Susan has been inspired by Sri Lanka to a great extent that she is writing about her experiences pertaining to the island.

She says “I have been greatly moved by what I saw in Sri Lanka for the short time that I was here, the change of natural environment from the dry zone to the wet, from the jungles to the desert region and from cold places like Nuwara Eliya to hotter places like Hambantota have been instrumental in shaping what I thought about Sri Lanka and my work on the story about global warming”.

“So what” he reported brusquely to himself. “Who says I won’t stay here forever?” And to prove to himself that he wasn’t afraid of the thought, he asked the attendant to uproot a sizeable century plant which according to the label, would send up one magnificent long-stemmed flower in approximately 45 years’ time and then majestically empire “We’ll see who goes first” he thought.

‘SUNSET OVER CHOCOLATE MOUNTAINS’

- by Susan Elderkin -