Meet the Carlton family. Three generations feature in Sharron Came’s new book, Peninsula, a collection of 10 stories revolving around the family, who live in the midst of a rural Northland community.
The idea of shining a light on life in a small town was Sharron’s inspiration for the book.
“Aotearoa is full of small towns with a main street and a Four Square, a pub, a rugby club room, a school, and medical centre, hopefully with sufficient staff. I’m thinking of the really small towns, the ones too small to be saddled with a carrot or an L&P bottle—I mean no disrespect to Ohakune and Paeroa,” she says.
“It occurred to me that it would be interesting to imagine what goes on in these little towns, sort of illuminate their inner workings.”
Sharron, who grew up on a small farm north of Auckland, brings her own rural pedigree to the page.
Life on the farm for her was surrounded by extended family and an assortment of animals, large and small. “We had a pet lizard called Daggy Boy, named after John Clarke. I don’t think that was strictly legal.”
At 17, she headed to the big smoke, but the country has a way of never quite letting go. “Part of me has never left rural Aotearoa. It’s a way of life I’ve come to appreciate more as I’ve aged,” she says.
Sharron won the 2021 Adam Foundation Prize in Creative Writing for the manuscript of Peninsula, which she completed as part of her Master of Arts at Te Pūtahi Tuhi Auahua o Te Ao—the International Institute of Modern Letters (IIML).
The award is all the more impressive given she was a relative newcomer to creative writing.
“Mostly, before the Master’s programme, I wrote non-fiction for my local tramping club newsletter and journal, for my blog, and other people’s blogs.”
As part of the degree, “I needed to learn how to write, to figure stuff out. I also had to do lots of reading because, before the Master’s programme, my reading was for pleasure. I’m one of those people who enjoys thrillers written by Lee Child and Jo Nesbø.
“I wrote around my day job and on the weekends. I used up five weeks of annual leave. Those ‘holiday’ weeks of focusing solely on writing were productive. I found the fact that I was using up my annual leave very motivating.”
Now her degree is completed, she’s “relaxed a bit”. Getting Peninsula published has been another milestone.
For the keen runner, it’s a lot like the end of a marathon race.
“[It] feels exactly like what I imagine it would be like to be the first woman to cross the finish line in the Ultra-Trail du Mont-Blanc—somewhat glorious, a sense of dazed wonderment tempered by huge relief to have made it to the finish line, mind and body more or less intact, and a slight worry about whether you’ll still be able to walk in the morning but, hell, you can remember the scenery you saw along the way, and your support crew. It was a life-changing experience.”
Peninsula, by Sharron Came, is available from Te Herenga Waka University Press. $30.