Novelist, playwright and screenwriter, Laline Paull was born in London and read English at Oxford. Her first novel The Bees is translated into 18 languages, most recently simplified Chinese, and she is currently adapting for the London stage. Her second novel The Ice deals with the realpolitik and corruption of Arctic development, and her latest, Pod, is a return to immersive storytelling set in a non-human world: the troubled ocean of today. She is married with children and lives in East Sussex.
She speaks to the newsweekly about her work and environmental awareness.
What does climate change mean to you and how important is it for the world to take it seriously?
This is a rare moment where everyone alive on earth, can be part of the collective decision to save our natural world - or to let it perish. It is an opportunity for positive change and human evolution, and if we focus on that instead of the dread and despair, we will be encouraged to keep up or begin, our efforts to join in and win the battle to slow, and then stop, climate change. The stakes have never been higher for all of us.
You’ve been praised for your environmental awareness by your readers. How much of that enables you to be more sensitive toward climate change?
I never intended to become known for my environmental awareness, and what I have, came about quite organically, when I became interested in honeybees. I never intended to write a novel about how amazing they were, until how amazing they really were, which was something I couldn’t stop talking about. That’s when I knew there was a story to be told, set in a beehive, and that’s when I really got stuck into studying them. And of course, everything is connected in this world, so studying the biology of the honeybee, led me to an awareness of the existential crisis that faces all pollinators. It took a little while for the data I was absorbing, to reveal itself as the terrifying picture of our life without bees, and pollinators. You can’t stay neutral in the face of the facts about that; we’ve been killing the tiny, brilliant and totally unprotected creatures we depend on for our own survival, and we have to stop. So the miraculous little honeybee led me to see her plight and write a novel set in her world.
How and from where do you derive inspiration and knowledge to write your books?
Though I had long secretly aspired to write a novel, my first one, The Bees, came about almost by accident, reading about honeybees in the aftermath of the early death of a beekeeper friend. Like most children, I was fascinated by animals and nature in general, but because my maths wasn’t good enough, I dropped all science subjects after GCSEs (O-Levels for me). Only when I stepped into researching honeybees, did I realise how much I loved learning about another life form, and how fascinating it was.
After I’d finished that novel, I was then much more aware of climate change, global warming, and how the Arctic is heating up faster than anywhere else on earth, and I became fascinated in that murky arena of geopolitics, and the unprotected high seas, and the opening up of the long-sought shipping route right over the North Pole. I found a story there, explored it in my second novel The Ice, which is more about the greed and short-sightedness of the human-animal than any other.
My third novel, POD, is set in an equatorial ocean and is about how two rival pods of dolphins (and other marine animals) struggle to survive in an ocean that is changing beyond their ability to understand. Once again, it’s science-based, and the stranger things are true. Nature is my inspiration, then I get fascinated and perhaps a bit obsessed by one aspect, then another, and then comes the hard work of making a good story from all the juicy bits...
As an award-winning novelist and as w woman, how do you think women can play an important role in spreading awareness around climate change, given the fact that women are deeply affected by it?
My understanding of climate justice is that those wealthy nations that have contributed most to climate change should support the poorer nations that are most affected by it. Women and girls in these poorer nations typically do not benefit from the kinds of freedoms and advantages of women and girls in the richer nations. To me, gender equality and women’s rights are an indivisible part of climate justice. There is no good argument to exploit women’s labour, keeping girls ignorant, degrading natural resources in the service of shareholder profit, and to keep poisoning our planet because it serves ’the status quo’. No one person, no one nation, is singly responsible for the mess we are in - but there is at least one clear and achievable thing we can do to start making a positive difference: educate and protect girls and women in those poorer countries and communities. Help them to help themselves and in turn, we will live in a better world.
How can the Asian community contribute towards building a better and more sustainable future amid solving the climate crisis?
At first, I was going to say ‘no different from any other community, but depending on where in Asia our heritage derives, we might have a particularly intimate relationship with the impact of climate change. We might be aware of particular areas and communities that are in acute need to support, and we have in-depth knowledge and experience of where and how we can target our aid.
I know that in Asia there are millions of girls who don’t automatically get an education, nor have an expectation of equality. My family came to the UK from India in the early 1960s, and ever since I was earning money, through ActionAid I have supported one Indian girl’s education at a time. Each one of them could be me. In these troubled times, it’s good to pause and give thanks for all our blessings. If clean water comes out of the tap, if the press of a finger gives light, if there is food on the table and shelter at night, we are rich. Asian or not, we have so much to share, and so much power to harness for good - if we only know where to direct it.
