Books of my life by Julie Bertagna
“From childhood, I always had a head full of stories, alternative realities that felt real to me,” says award-winning author Julie Bertagna (MA 1984). Julie’s books for children and young adults are published globally and five have been nominated for the Carnegie Medal. 'Zenith', 'Aurora' and 'Exodus' (shortlisted for the Whitbread Children’s Book Award) are set in a future world devastated by global warming. Julie is passionate about raising climate change issues with young people and thinks they are more informed than ever on the challenges facing the planet.
The book I come back to again and again
'The Age of Innocence' by Edith Wharton. Not just a searing story of star-crossed lovers, it’s full of amazing wild and savage imagery because it’s about the brutality of civilisation, the lies and suffering and soul-bargaining that families and societies are built upon – how the individual spirit is stamped upon and what it does to us – so that the human tribe can survive and thrive.
"Young adults read differently. They often live deeply in the world of the book, obsessed with the characters and the details. It's a privilege and a challenge to write for readers like that.
The book that made me cry the most
My mother found me crying in the garden on my 17th birthday and assumed a boy had broken my heart. I’d just finished reading 'Sunset Song' by Lewis Grassic Gibbon and was in pieces. The brutal beauty of it destroys me anew each time.
The book I loved most as a child
Alan Garner’s 'The Weirdstone of Brisingamen'. I suffered badly from asthma and bronchitis as a child, in the days before inhalers, and can still feel the suffocating terror of the scenes with Colin and Susan worming their way through a maze of mine tunnels where the walls, roof and floor fit them like a second skin. Nevertheless, I read it again and again.
The book I wish I’d written
'Housekeeping' by Marilynne Robinson. A diamond of a book. Unique, heartbreaking, luminous and odd. Nature and water seep into every crack of the book. I’d love to write such a subtly powerful, extraordinary story.
"I seem to begin with a landscape, and my characters grow out of that. I need to see where they are before I can imagine who they are.
The books that get me through the hard times
New Scots Makar Kathleen Jamie’s explorations on nature, landscape, life’s beauty and brutality. In 'Findings', 'Sightlines' and 'Surfacing' her poet’s eye and the way she knits meaning has taken me beyond an enclosed life this last year and helped me see and feel small wonders in the world around me when I felt numb. Exceptional writing.
The fictional character I'd like to meet most
Lord Asriel from Philip Pullman’s 'His Dark Materials' – a man who can shift the fabric of the universe and step into other worlds. You don’t get more exciting than that.
The book I’m reading now
Just before lockdown, I read and loved Pat Barker's 'The Silence of the Girls', her story of the voiceless women in Homer's 'The Iliad'. I began 'Circe' by Madeline Miller, a feminist spin on Homer’s 'Odyssey', straight after this, but have had a hard year when I’ve struggled to read. Now I’ve begun it again in a changed world. So far, it’s beautiful and dazzling. Just what I need.
The book that changed my mind
I read 'The Handmaid’s Tale' when it was published, in my twenties, after four years of studying mostly male writers for Honours English Literature & Language. It turned the world on its head for me as I saw how frighteningly fast the hard-won freedoms we take for granted can vanish, if we don’t pay attention, and told the story from a then-revolutionary female point of view. Also James Lovelock’s 'Gaia', his revolutionary book on the planet.
The book I am proudest of
'Exodus' has been published all around the world and won awards, so I’m obviously proud of that. But what means the most is all the young readers who have said it’s a book that has stayed in their imagination for years, that will always stay with them, has even changed the way they see the world. It’s amazing to me that almost twenty years after publication, readers and schools are still contacting me about the 'Exodus' trilogy.
The book I recommend to others
Currently anything by Elena Ferrante and also the dreamy, lyrical memoirs and meanderings of Patti Smith who (akin to Kathleen Jamie) makes magic out of the mundane.
Julie is working on her first adult novel, with the setting her own home in the 1890s. “The week before she died suddenly, my elderly neighbour bequeathed a secret to me about the first inhabitants of our Victorian house. I was left with a tantalising half-story that led me on a detective trail and unearthed an amazing story involving Alfred Nobel, dynamite, suffragettes, and the Mackintosh set. It’s the Glasgow novel I always wanted to write but, until now, never had the story!” Julie is also currently writing a mystery novel with strong eco themes for young readers, inspired by the Ancient Caledonian Forest.
Twitter: @juliebertagna
Instagram: @juliebertagna1
This article was first published September 2021.
WRITING IN A CLIMATE CRISIS
Photo: courtesy of Julie Bertagna
“I stumbled across the issue of climate change when I spotted a tiny newspaper report, an SOS to the outside world from the Kiribati islanders in the South Pacific, who were, and still are, at the mercy of rising seas. That was 20 years ago. As the scale of the possible calamity facing the world became apparent to me, I’ve felt a responsibility as a writer for young people to use stories and also discussion in my school talks to raise awareness in an empowering way.
“One young woman said she became a marine biologist because of reading 'Exodus'. Young people who read it in their teens have told me the books inspired them to study and work in green, sustainable future careers. Some have become writers, some writing eco-fiction. I find all this incredible and wonderful.
“A climate-wrecked future isn’t sci-fi any more; it’s all too frighteningly real. The kids have realised that we, the adults, have blown it – unless things change fast. Many young readers see an unnerving similarity between Greta Thunberg and Mara, my young protagonist in 'Exodus' – as I do. It’s as if Mara has crashed into present reality, desperately trying to alert the adults to the looming catastrophe.
“There’s a hard journey ahead for all life on Earth but if – and it’s a crucial if – we have the urgency, the will, focus and imagination, I believe the human survival spirit and our creativity can rise to the challenge. This is the hope at the heart of the books.”