How the collision of nature and urban spaces inspired Menaka Raman-Wilms's debut book
The Rooftop Garden is on the Scotiabank Giller Prize longlist
Menaka Raman-Wilms is a writer and journalist based in Toronto. Her debut novel, The Rooftop Garden, was published this October.
The Rooftop Garden follows Nabila and her childhood friend Matthew, who played on Nabila's rooftop garden in an imaginary world that has flooded from climate change. Nabila comes from an educated, middle-class family, while Matthew had been abandoned by his father and was often left to deal with things on his own. Their childhood experiences reveal how their lives are on different trajectories, even at an early stage.
Now both in their 20s, Matthew has disappeared from his Toronto home, and Nabila travels to Berlin to find him and try to bring him back.
Raman-Wilms is the host of The Decibel, the daily news podcast from the Globe and Mail. She's also worked as a parliamentary reporter for the Globe and Mail and an associate producer at CBC Radio.
Her short story Black Coffee was shortlisted for the 2019 CBC Short Story Prize. The 2024 CBC Short Story Prize is open now for submissions, and the winner will receive a two-week writing residency at Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity. They will also receive $6,000 from the Canada Council for the Arts and have their work published on CBC Books. You have until Nov. 1, 2023 to submit your original, unpublished fiction that is up to 2,500 words.
The Rooftop Garden is on the 2023 Scotiabank Giller Prize longlist. The shortlist will be announced on Oct. 11.
Raman-Wilms spoke to CBC Books about The Rooftop Garden.
Nature melding with urban spaces
"I started writing this book in 2015. I was living in Berlin for six months with one of my friends. A lot of the inspiration came from being there.
"Berlin is such a fascinating city. You've got destruction from the war. You've got destruction from the time there was literally a wall running through the city. But there's still a lot of remnants of those things. Some parts were more affluent. Other parts were not as well off. There's a lot of park space. Trees are growing through rubble. There are old pictures of one of the museums that was neglected during the war years and grass coming up through parts of that.
There's a lot of park space. Trees are growing through rubble. There are old pictures of one of the museums that was neglected during the war years and grass coming up through parts of that.
"We always think about urban spaces — when you cut down the natural world and you bring in an urban space. But in some cases, like what I'm seeing in Berlin, it's like there was this urban space that the natural world is reclaiming. It was fascinating to me to see that kind of juxtaposition."
The Fairytale Forest
"Another big inspiration is this amusement park that Nabila and her friend Tiernay go to, which in the final version is called the Fairytale Forest.
"It was based on a real abandoned amusement park that I visited in Berlin, which blew my mind. It is a whole amusement park, with an old Ferris wheel, old booths and rides totally overgrown by a forest. It's almost too movie-like to be real life because you have all these fairytale figures in this overgrown space.
"It was a very cool experience that stuck with me."
Destruction of a joyful place
"I was in Berlin during the Paris attacks in November of 2015. So this idea of gunmen in public places feels very real. You don't always have clear answers for why someone would do that — and how they end up in a place like that. These attacks were something I was thinking about.
"I remember being at the Christmas markets in Berlin that December. There was one moment that was actually very scary. We were in a packed market and there was a big explosion. I remember everyone going silent. Then everyone started running and it was pure panic. It ended up not being anything; a propane tank had exploded behind a stall. But the fear was so palpable at that time in big cities in Europe.
This is the pinnacle of how to hurt a society — a joyful place like a market where people are having fun with family and celebrating.
"The following year, in 2016, there was an attack in another Christmas market that I had been to. This is the pinnacle of how to hurt a society — a joyful place like a market where people are having fun with family and celebrating. To have someone try to wreak havoc and destruction at such a place was just so stark."
Different writing headspaces
"This book was written and rewritten so many times in so many different places. I started writing it in Berlin. Then I was living in Toronto and I revamped a whole bunch of stuff. Then I was in Ottawa and I revamped it yet again. I was then at the cottage and I revamped it once more.
Any time I'm in a different place, I'm in a different writing headspace.
"Any time I'm in a different place, I'm in a different writing headspace. If I'm at a cottage, you hear the water, the wind and the trees and all of a sudden, I had some new things to add to The Rooftop Garden because there are these different sensations that would work really well. When I was back in Toronto, I forgot the size of the buildings in the city and the feel of that.
"The book was written in a bunch of different places — and I feel like these places seep into the writing as a whole."
Menaka Raman-Wilms' comments have been edited for length and clarity.
