The Water Takes #author Sarah Walker

Pam is in her mid-seventies, widowed and hiding from the world behind a caustic sense of humour. Her health is declining, and she’s afraid of dying alone, but her most pressing concern is complaining to the council about her waterlogged garden.

When Pam’s ten-year-old neighbour, Charlotte, is foisted upon her, a tentative friendship begins to unfurl, cracking open Pam’s hard exterior.

But the puddles in the garden become pools, and then sinkholes. Nowhere seems safe. With no help coming, Pam and Charlotte can only shelter in place for so long – eventually, they know they must attempt to navigate a catastrophically altered world.

The Water Takes is a work of astonishing literary imagination with the urgent page-turning propulsion of a thriller. Full of surprises and revelations, with a sense of humanity that is never clichéd or sentimental, The Water Takes will make you laugh and cry – and it will stay with you forever.

To connect with Sarah ...
https://sarahwalker.work/
https://www.instagram.com/sarahtakesphotos
https://www.simonandschuster.com.au/books/The-Water-Takes/Sarah-Walker/9781761633324

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:02

Good morning, Sarah Walker. Welcome to Yellow Shelf. Hello, thank you so much. Yeah, awesome. Thanks for being here. Congratulations. Your book's available now. The Water Takes. Tell us all about it.

SPEAKER_01 0:15

It's very exciting. It's so lovely to have this thing that was in my head become a real physical object. The Water Takes is the story of Pam, who is she's in her mid-70s. She's a widower. She's really funny and no nonsense. Her life is pretty um small since the death of her husband. And she sort of begrudgingly makes friends with the 10-year-old girl Charlotte, who lives next door, kind of at the urging of their parents. So the book starts out as this kind of like odd couple friendship, but then sinkholes start opening in the town. The next door neighbor's house goes down. And so there is this older woman and this young child left trying to navigate disaster while they're not physically able to go on this kind of like heroic journey to save the world, just trying to figure out like how to be in this space and with each other.

SPEAKER_00 1:01

And it was your book's been described, I read, as a dystopian thriller. Do you think that's a fair assumption?

SPEAKER_01 1:11

Um, I mean, in the sense of uh it being a very disastrous space, then yeah, I suppose that's true. I mean, dystopia is its uh own genre with all these kind of really like heavy um codes to it. I I think that dystopias tend to have no hope in them. And I I think that one of the things I really hope to to um uh create in this space is that these two characters kind of learn more about each other, learn more about each other's needs. There is kind of hope as they discover what agency means for each other, and that means something very different for a young girl and an older woman who's kind of at the end of her life. Um, yeah, so uh it has that kind of like genre-y element, but uh it's definitely not um totally devoid of hope, I think.

SPEAKER_00 1:57

I'm glad I asked because I felt the same thing. It was like I'm gonna I'm just gonna ask Sarah what she thinks about that um that description. The book definitely explores uh themes of survival and grief as well as unlikely friendship.

SPEAKER_01 2:13

Yeah, absolutely. I think that's totally true. I'm really interested in this. Um, so Pam is not a parent, she's not a grandparent. I feel like so often when we see older women in literature, they are occupying that role. Um, and especially in disastrous situations, uh, you don't very often get to be like, okay, what does this look like for someone who, you know, is physically in pain and and can't just sort of go striding out into the set? Um and then this kind of quite vulnerable young girl who's having to rely on uh on Pam. Yeah, I I all these beautiful sort of tensions and surprises that emerge between them. Um I had that was such a joy to write.

SPEAKER_00 2:50

Yeah. And do you want to tell us about that? I I'm curious about your writing journey as an author. You know, um, what inspired you to write, Sarah? And anything we need to know about you if we're watching.

SPEAKER_01 3:02

Um I don't think there's anything particular you need to know about me. I uh I came to writing fairly, I mean, I've always written, but I came to publication um a little later. So I was in my 30s by the time I was first published, which I think is great. Because I think if I'd been writing when I was in my early 20s, I would have had nothing to write about, and it would have been really pretentious. So I think I've like figured out a voice that is very readable um while still, you know, engaging with some some fairly um uh big issues. My first book was a non-fiction book called The First Time I Thought I Was Dying, which was about anxiety and the unruly body. Um the water takes came out of being uh I was living in Geelong with my partner, we'd been in lockdown there, and I was just thinking about what it is to have a life that suddenly becomes really small. And also this sinkhole had opened in a street in Geelong, um, just before I started writing the book. And I was like, what a strange thing that is. And they the sinkholes have continued to kind of haunt the writing and the publication of the book. But um, yeah, I was kind of just interested in like, okay, what does it look like to have a disaster story with an older female character? That felt really important. And then um, yeah, the introduction of Charlotte, this younger girl, really sort of sparked all the new direction of the book.

SPEAKER_00 4:19

Yeah. And Sarah, I was looking at your website today. So for anyone curious about you, your writing journey, your work, um, you got a great website. But do you want to point us in the direction if we're curious about you or curious about the book? Where do we go?

SPEAKER_01 4:34

Absolutely. Uh so I have a very common name. Sarah Walker is a uh, if you Google me, there's a lot of this. So my website is SarahWalker.work. And on there you can see my writing, but also my arts practice and my photography. I've worked as a photographer for 20 years. Um, and all those things kind of sort of interweave and creative, creative. This kind of like anxiety and disaster is really present in all of those things. Um, yeah, so Sarahwalker.work is where to find me.

SPEAKER_00 5:00

Awesome. Well, Sarah, thank you so much for joining us and sharing about the book. Will you keep writing? Is that the plan? Would you love to do that?

SPEAKER_01 5:07

Yeah, absolutely. I'm working on um, I've got a first draft of a new uh fiction book written, and I'm um currently working on a pitch for non-fiction books. So yeah, absolutely. I mean, writing is such a joy, and I feel so lucky to get to to do it as as part of um part of my creative practice and part of the ways I make a living. So yes, I will absolutely keep writing.

SPEAKER_00 5:28

Well, I'll support you. I'd love you to come back uh with anyone, Sarah. Thank you so much. All the best. Pleasure, thank you.