By Miriam Sharland
Miriam Sharland’s eco-memoir Heart Stood Still is the latest title in the Ka Haea Te Ata series from Otago University Press, a series dedicated to casting light on issues of importance in Aotearoa today.
In early 2020 Sharland was nearing the end of a 17-year adventure in Aotearoa. A desire to return to family and the familiar was pulling her back to her homeland, England. When Covid put an end to her travel plans, she found herself facing isolation in Manawatū instead.
Despite her initial unhappiness, Sharland came to see this strange and unexpected time as a gift – an opportunity to explore the natural beauty of the home she’d known for many years but had not fully seen or appreciated. Her explorations were grounding, and she began to examine what it means to truly ‘belong.’
Heart Stood Still is a record of Sharland’s journey towards finding healing in the world’s natural beauty, a beauty that we must fight to protect in the current climate crisis. It is both a memoir and a lyrical portrait of Manawatū. Through a series of personal essays that follow the pattern of the seasons, Sharland skilfully weaves reflections on her life and family history with observations on the native and introduced plants and animals about her; all tinged with her experience as ‘an unsettled settler’ in Aotearoa.
Readers who enjoy books such as Olivia Laing’s To the River (2017), Ingrid Horrocks’ Where We Swim (2020) and Patricia Grace’s From the Centre (2021) will appreciate the quiet, contemplative nature of Heart Stood Still.
Author
Miriam Sharland is a writer and editor focusing on creative non-fiction, travel, biography/memoir and natural history. Based in England and Aotearoa New Zealand, her essays, reviews and features have appeared in numerous books, journals, magazines and newspapers, and online. These include Reader’s Digest, The Dark Mountain Project, The Dominion Post, Headland and Adventure Travel. In 2021 she was awarded a writing grant from the Earle Creativity Trust and in 2022 she was runner-up in the New Zealand Society of Authors Central Districts summer essay competition. Heart Stood Still is her first book.
Publication details
Heart Stood Still is a part of the Ka Haea Te Ata series by Otago University Press.
Ka Haea Te Ata: books that cast light on issues of importance in Aotearoa today.
Paperback, 210 x 148mm
ISBN 9781990048708, RRP $35
Release date: April 22, 2024
Reviews and interviews
- “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.” – Miriam Sharland speaks to Kiah Radcliffe for the Manawatū Standard Read