The Axeman’s Carnival won the NZ Book Award for Fiction in 2023. I have enjoyed a few books by Catherine Chidgey, including Remote Sympathy (my review), The Transformation and most recently Pet.
Surviving the High Country
While the novel’s hero and narrator is a common magpie, The Axeman’s Carnival is a social commentary on the struggles of carrying on family farm traditions and tending to relationships on a remote high country farm, infused with magic realism and comic relief. The author acknowledges the use of diaries belonging to her late mother-in-law, who lived on a high country sheep station.
Strong Man Chops Wood
The Axeman’s Carnival refers to a wood chopping competition, which is one of the final scenes in the novel and an event that Marnie’s husband Rob judges himself by.
He runs a hill country sheep farm in Central Otago, in the South Island of New Zealand, land that his father in part cleared of stones making it more fertile for grass, but also land that was in part lost (including his childhood home) to flooding required to create a large dam. Though he doesn’t remember the home, images of it recur often in his dreams.
The farm is struggling, they are increasingly drowning in debt and despite Marnie’s working outside the home as well as helping on the farm, her husband is volatile and easily made jealous, quick to turn his rage against his wife. When he’s not outside tending to the farm, he watches one genre of crime show.
Later he watched his crime show about beautiful dead women found in alleyways, all rucked up and staring. The man who came to look at the beautiful dead women wore a gun strapped to his side and sunglasses that were also mirrors, and he said things like This was no suicide, Trent. See the spatter patterns and The perp’s taunting us. He’s dangling the victims as bait and we’re biting.
Separation from the Family of Origin
One day Marnie acquires a fledgling magpie chick and brings it inside, despite the threats from Rob. The entire novel is narrated from the perspective of Tama, including those first memories of being lifted into her pillowed palm.
My siblings cried out as she carried me away, calling from our nest high in the spiny branches: Father! Father! Where are you? Come back! My mother called for him too, her voice frantic and afraid – but he , hunting for food, had left us all unguarded.
Can Humans Be Trusted?
The bird is named Tama, he survives and grows and when she releases him, he revisits his magpie family up in the pines, but realises they seem to have disowned him due to his association with humans.
Father magpie is an expert on the faults of humans and preaches lessons to the younger generations, warning of traps and lures. When he learns what happened to his mother ‘Death by car’ and his brothers ‘Death by cold‘, he makes up his mind.
Tama, who has learned to use the cat door, returns to Marnie and begins to speak his first words. Because Tama is the narrator, we also hear his thoughts on what he is observing and see how he tries to navigate between the worlds of the two species he is entwined with, his magpie family and his human one.
My father kept his eye on me, waiting or me to betray myself. Every day he told me another bad story about humans: they wrung our necks, they ran us down, they shot us, they poisoned us.
‘Doesn’t that bother you?’ he said.
‘Yes, Father,’ I said.
‘I don’t think it bothers you. I don’t think you believe me.’
‘I believe you, Father.’
‘You still reek of her.’
Bringing the Outside World In
While Marnie is amused by Tama’s antics, her husband is irritated by his attachment to her and encroachment into their lives. But every threatening line he utters adds to the increased repository of retorts that come out of the beak of the bird.
I suppose I should have tried to behave myself – and I was wary of him, don’t get me wrong. I saw the strength in his hard hands, and I knew it could lead nowhere good. I knew he’d had a gutsful. But I couldn’t keep quiet; I was my own worst enemy.
When she creates a twitter account for the magpie, it becomes popular while being another source of disapproval by her possessive husband. Until they discover he could be a source of income and help save the farm.
The story follows the family and the impact of the internet sensation and becoming known, however none of these changes to their life or fortune transform our characters in any way. Marnie continues to try and gain approval of her husband, he remains jealous of any contact she has with others, whether around them or online. While his behaviour is checked by the presence of webcams in the home, through Tama’s eyes, we witness the relaationship unravelling with mounting dread.
Champion or Brute
The narrative builds up to the carnival where he aims to become a 10 times ‘golden axes’ champion and Marnie and her sister have a surprise planned for their husbands, which she becomes increases nervous about whether it is a good idea or not.
The novel is full of clever wise-cracking moments, thanks to the mimicking retorts of the magpie, which lighten what is otherwise a threatening environment and a serious subject. Marnie is a victim of domestic violence and the only witness, Tama the talking magpie. He is the intelligent observer and hero of the novel, even if his own authenticity has been compromised by how the humans have turned him into a money making spectacle causing him to be spurned by his own.
While the theme is covered well, including the victims tendency to make excuses for the perpetrator and the constant critical comments of a mother, ceaselessly undermining her self-worth, I was disappointed that there wasn’t real transformation or growth in the human characters. There is resolution yes, but an opportunity missed, particularly given the serious nature of the crime.
As unsettling as it is entertaining, the brilliantly written voice and antics of Tama, carry the story forward, poking fun and provoking an already tense situation, until its splintering, scorching conclusion.
Highly Recommended.
Further Reading
The Conversation review: Catherine Chidgey’s revealing, uncomfortable novels bridge worlds by Julian Novitz, 25 Mar 2024
Financial Times review: The Axeman’s Carnival — when a magpie steals the limelight
Irish Times review: An imaginative and well executed novel
New Zealand Family Violence and Economic Harm Statistics
Author, Catherine Chidgey
Catherine Chidgey is an award-winning and bestselling New Zealand novelist and short-story writer whose novels have been published to international acclaim.
Her first novel, In a Fishbone Church, won the Betty Trask Award, and was longlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction. Golden Deed was Time Out’s Book of the year, a Best Book in the LA Times Book Review and a Notable Book in the New York Times Book Review. Her fourth novel, The Wish Child (2016) won the 2017 Acorn Foundation Fiction Prize, the country’s major literary prize.
Remote Sympathy (2021) was shortlisted for the Dublin Literary Award and the Jann Medlicott Acorn Prize for Fiction, and longlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction. Her most recent novel Pet (2023) was longlisted for the Dublin Literary award.
N.B. Thank you kindly to Europa Editions for providing me with a copy of the book to read and review.
Grand, tells the story of Noelle McCarthy’s growing up in Hollymount, County Cork and the highs and lows of being around a mother, who had already lost two children before she was born and was herself never comforted by her own mother. Seeking to self-regulate through the effect of alcohol, Grand demonstrates numerous effects of having been raised under those circumstances and how a multi-faceted generational trauma passes down.
Noelle McCarthy is an award-winning writer and radio broadcaster. Her story ‘Buck Rabbit’ won the Short Memoir section of the Fish Publishing International Writing competition in 2020 and this memoir Grand won the Best First Book General Nonfiction Award at the NZ Book Awards 2023.
One that didn’t win, but that was Number 4 in The People’s Choice and one I have heard a lot about and sighted on a recent visit to London, is 
The farm, nestled up against a national park, was inherited by Jill Darvish; her husband Owen, a self-made pest-control business man has just been knighted for services to conservation, though he is unsure exactly why.
The story takes place over one weekend when a young New Zealand novelist named Grace Cleave, who is living in London, takes a train to spend the weekend with Philip, a journalist, his wife and two young children. She has escaped the city for a while after accepting an invitation to visit the family following an interview about her work and ambitions.
During the visit, many instances, objects and mutterings remind her of her own faraway home, memories of childhood intercede and brilliant metaphors come to her fully formed. It was as if she were being filled with future content and yet the contrast with how she came across to others was painful for her to witness.
Word by Word 