In his debut novel The Sapling, the Canadian actor shares the profound, life-altering friendship he formed with his teacher…
By Stephan Petar
Everyone has stories. Some are publicly shared and others remain exclusive to a person or a small group of people. Some stories are snapshots of one’s life, reflecting a single moment. Others can stretch a lifetime.
Actor Marc Bendavid (Reacher, Dark Matter) has held a transformative story for more than two decades, and it’s one that altered his life. It’s a story about a platonic intergenerational friendship between him and his teacher, Klara. The friendship blossomed during a life transition for Bendavid that saw his home dynamic change and the realities of adulthood begin to take shape. It’s a narrative those closest to the performer have only heard or experienced snippets of.
When he learned Klara was dying, the realization that his memories of this delicate relationship could be lost dawned on him. “I felt this sudden pressure that I was now the sole caretaker of all these very special memories; that on the approach of Klara’s death I would be the only one to have them,” he shares. “I wanted to write them down, so as not to forget them myself.”
He wrote down a collection of moments between the two as he was grieving. These eventually became the subject of his debut novel, The Sapling. The autobiographical fiction has been described as “incredibly delicate” and “tender.” It’s not only a tribute to their friendship, but a tale illustrating the fragility of memories.
Bendavid met Klara when he was in the sixth grade. He was 11 years old, and she was 43. Klara, an immigrant from South Africa, was an art teacher at his school. The book documents their connection, which involved lengthy phone calls, letters exchanged and photography excursions into nature.
As the tale progresses, readers witness the evolution of their friendship. It becomes infrequent as Bendavid moves to high school, to university and into adulthood. When he learns Klara is dying, the narrative explores his coming to terms with her impending death, the moments they shared and his grief. Providing a glimpse into an unusual bond, its loss and the questions it raises.
When we sat down with Bendavid, he explained how he unlocked these memories and what writing process he adopted to complete the book.
Unlocking memories…
“So many questions now, all rushing headlong into the same answer: I don’t remember,” Bendavid writes in The Sapling. The sentence illustrates how fragile our memory can be; how it can begin to fade over time. Throughout the text, Bendavid isn’t afraid to contemplate these lost moments. He even poses questions, which seem to be prompts to help him potentially regain them.
While the author did recall key moments, other details about the decades-long friendship re-emerged when he least expected. After learning from Klara’s daughter that Klara was dying, Bendavid began experiencing vivid dreams that he mentions in the novel. He describes them as “very intense” and appearing every night for a few weeks.
“I would wake up in the middle of every single night for two weeks with these memories,” he says about that section of the book, noting it wasn’t an exaggeration. “ It was as though once I fell deep enough asleep, that pages of a book were held in front of me and I could just take notes.… It was that vivid.”
He jotted down details over months, documenting whatever began flooding back. “I would remember a conversation or an outfit or a piece of art,” he shares. “I would write them down and a lot of times they were a couple of lines or a paragraph handwritten on a piece of paper.”
Given the distance, and being closer in age to the adults around him at the time, it seems Bendavid revaluates moments from his past through a different lens. In one recollection, he recalls a family acquaintance raising suspicion about the friendship. He admits the moment made him feel shameful and horrible at the time. “If it seems obvious today, even commendable, that an adult might feel obliged to ask this of a child in my circumstance, I simply couldn’t believe it then,” he writes in the book.
Even when he believed every stone had been turned, new memories emerged during the editing process. “I think because I forced myself to be in the space of this story for so many days, hours and months that things just wafted up through the floorboards.”
The way Bendavid recounts these moments and illustrates the influence it had on him. While the book is now in stores, it’s likely the author will continue excavating memories of this time in his life for years to come.
Turning life fragments into a story…
Though The Sapling is Bendavid’s first book, he’s been writing poems, short stories and essays his whole life. But those works never went anywhere. “I never really finished anything properly.… I would just abandon things,” he reveals, noting he did finish a novella. “I have this graveyard of unfinished projects around me and I wanted to finish something to the end with this.”
To prevent The Sapling from ending up with his other projects, he entered a strict writing routine. “Monday to Friday, four hours every morning. I’m locking myself up in a little office,” he says about his writing process. “If I can’t write or am too tired or unfocused, then I read. I have to be with written words in some way or another.”
His partner, actor François Arnaud (Midnight Texas, Yellowjackets), played a major role in helping him focus. “He was an essential part of my discipline,” Bendavid shares, noting he gave Arnaud strict parameters not to disturb him unless there was an emergency. “He kind of shepherded me when I was reluctant, or told me to get back to work.”
Bendavid credits his writing discipline partly to his acting profession, noting an actor’s persistence and endurance. When asked if his passion for gardening helped, he agrees that it did, although he admits he had never thought about it before.
“What you do in a garden is you go back. You keep going back to the same part with the same plants and do the same thing.… You trim or you feed or you water or you transplant,” he explains. “You’re always going over a landscape that’s more or less the same to observe the little changes.” He likens this repetitive gardening practice to reworking chapters during the editing process.
When it came to choosing a title, he had a list of options. In the end, The Sapling felt right. It encapsulates his passion for gardening, his love of nature, and a specific memory. It is also a nod to the moment in his life when he met Klara, as “sapling” also means a young person.
The book introduces an unconventional friendship that many may not agree with. “These kinds of friendships can occupy a potentially powerful position and that’s also why they’re potentially dangerous. It is essentially a power dynamic that’s out of whack,” Bendavid says. “If the adult in that dynamic has your best interest at heart, it permits you to grasp a sense of identity and self-possession that can be more powerful than what we give kids at 13 and 14.”
Overall, the book is a contemplative read. It may have readers examining the relationships in their life, searching for memories and seeing them from a new perspective.
The Sapling, by Marc Bendavid, is out now wherever books are sold.
STEPHAN PETAR is a born and raised Torontonian, known for developing lifestyle, entertainment, travel, historical and 2SLGBTQI+ content. He enjoys wandering the streets of any destination he visits, where he’s guaranteed to discover something new or meet someone who will inspire his next story.
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