Today we’re over the moon to welcome author Abi Elphinstone to My Book Corner Q&A section.
- Can you share with us a special memory from the time you spent living with the Kazakh Eagle Hunters in Mongolia?
In the Altai Mountains, I ate larch sap (one of the oldest forms of chewing gum), drank fermented horse milk (like sipping liquid stilton infused with a hint of unwashed dog) and camped beneath ice-bright stars but what I remember most vividly was what it felt like to sit with the Kazakh Eagle Hunters inside their gers. Their felt tents are lined with colourful rugs and tapestries and in the centre of each one there is a roaring fire. Altai clans believe that the home fire is sacred. You mustn’t throw rubbish into it or let it fizzle out and if you want to cleanse your ger from evil spirits you should burn juniper. Sitting with the Kazakh Eagle Hunters around the fire, while they played the dombra, tended to their golden eagles and told stories, made me feel as if I was a part of something ancient. Something very close to magic.
2. What made you choose a snow leopard to write about?
Last year, I asked my eight-year-old son a question: if you could hold a wild animal in your arms, which one would you choose? Without hesitation, he said: ‘a snow leopard cub.’ And when I asked why, he replied: ‘because they’re hardly ever seen so it would be like holding a miracle.’ That night, I started planning Goodnight Silver. I decided I wanted to write about a child who had given up on miracles. A girl who had hoped, to no avail, for something extraordinary. I found myself thinking of the hopes I’d built and seen dashed over many years when trying for a baby. But what might it feel like, I wondered, for a ten-year-old girl awaiting the arrival of a baby brother only to learn he wasn’t going to make it into our world after all? Where would all that love and longing go? And what would it take to convince this girl that hope was a thing worth clinging to? That’s where the snow leopard came in. Because to see the ‘ghost of the mountain’ – one of the most beautiful and elusive animals on our planet (a creature who can leap the length of a humpback whale, move as silently as mist and dismember a sheep with the ease and precision of a concert pianist) – would indeed be to witness a miracle. One that might just be enough to turn a child’s life around…
3. Do you believe in magic?
The more time I spend in the wild, the more I believe in magic. I saw a snow leopard up in Scotland’s Highland Wildlife Park. Its paws were the size of plates. It had black and brown markings, each one a different shape, like a jigsaw you know you’ll never manage to complete. And its tail was almost as long as its body. But most of all, I remember the snow leopard’s gaze. What it felt like to be beheld by such a creature. It was a gaze that disarmed me: fierce grace, beauty and wildness. And it felt like proof that no matter what humans invent or build or decree, there walks upon this earth something far more miraculous. The natural world is full of marvels: hummingbirds that fly backwards, frogs with frozen hearts, rafflesia flowers that grow as large as tractor wheels. And these things feel, to me, like magic.
3. Emmy describes herself as a pessimist. How would you describe yourself?
I’m an optimist. But I am less than sunny when my alarm goes off in the mornings. It takes a few hours for the positivity to kick in… I do have moments of acute worry and dread, especially when I consider some world leaders and their attitudes to our planet. But maybe that’s the thing about optimism: you’ve got to look both terror and joy in the eye then bank on the greater of these things being joy.
4. In the book club questions at the back of the book you ask readers what they would pack in their survival kit if they were heading into the Altai Mountains. What three things would you pack first?
Any book by Kate Di Camillo – reading a story by her is like swallowing a secret. One you should have known but didn’t and are now all the wiser for having discovered. A map – I have a truly terrible sense of direction. And maybe a box of Gower Cottage brownies.
5. What one piece of advice would you give to someone who wants to be a writer?
Being a writer is about writing the words not talking about writing the words on social media.
Read the review on My Book Corner here.
Leave a Reply