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When this review starts by remarking that the narrator is a pet magpie whose life on a New Zealand sheep farm goes viral on social media, many readers are likely wonder if they had somehow been redirected to the wrong site. Admittedly, I was puzzled myself as the bird filled me in with memories of life in the nest before being adopted by Marnie, a sheep farmer's wife who has recently miscarried her first child. Her husband Rob is less successful at farming than he imagined would be the case, though some of his problems, like climate change, are traceable to conditions beyond his control. His pride is wrapped up for the moment in retaining the Golden Axe for the tenth time in the Axeman's competition at the yearly carnival.
Bereft following the end of her pregnancy, Marnie finds solace in caring for an apparently abandoned baby magpie that she names Tama after the Tamagotchi toys. Rob disapproves and demands that Marnie get rid of the bird. Rob, it turns out, has ways of making his demands felt. He is a wife-beater, fuelled by alcohol and insecurity about his masculinity. Marnie, who has grown up being terrorized by her big brother, accepts Rob's abuse as partly her own fault. But this time, she is unwilling to obey her husband. She manages to potty train the bird and enjoys dressing him up in various costumes, a pastime that doesn't seem to annoy Tama in the least. Rob on the other hand is quietly plotting ways to rid himself of this unwanted nestling without Marnie finding out.
But magpies are brilliant mimics, and Tama is rapidly acquiring a large vocabulary of human utterances that he hears both from those around him and from the TV crime dramas that Rob enjoys. These Tama employs enthusiastically, though whether he has any idea of what he is saying is unclear. His comments can be very funny, but they also can drive Rob to thoughts of magpie murder.
Before he can act, however, the videos that Marnie has been posting on her social media go viral and Tama is an international sensation. As a result the financial stress that the family had been experiencing is relieved. Marnie starts a mail order business in Tami merch and tourists arrive in droves. Rob may or may not like Tami any better, but he does need the money.
Despite the upward tick in the family finances that has diminished uncertainty and menace, frequent scratchings in the attic and whiffs of unpleasant odours emanating from a colony of rats, let alone Rob's fixation on the axeman's competition and his collection of axes make the possibility of an ugly climax impossible to ignore. Will it be possible to make an exit from this volatile situation without a loss of life? Probably not, but whose life will it be?
It is not a simple plot device, however, that engages the reader. Some have suggested that the novel, with its animal narrator, is a sort of fable. But the animals in the classical examples of this device only wear their identities as costume–underneath they are sage humans. Tama is a magpie. He is never human, even if he loves Marnie. We know this because of the difference between the way he acts and the style of the narration. When what he says and does is reported, it is clear that he has learned, as pets usually do, what delights their humans. And they repeat what caused the pleasure to get a reward, quite possibly never understanding why it works.
So it is for Tama. His first-person narration exists only in his mind; it must – how else could it exist? Clever he may be, but Tama can't write. When he records what he pronounced using his ability to mimic speech, it is clear that he does not necessarily intend the reactions he provokes. He lists the string of phrases he uttered when Rob was furious about something, and only a few were actually relevant. When he is trying to re-establish contact with his magpie family that has rejected him, however, his words and theirs flow with the fluency of the birdsong they actually are.
Chidgey's imagining of her necessarily unreliable narrator may seem to reflect a similar device in her novel PET, which was published in North America last year. AXEMAN'S CARNIVAL actually appeared in 2022 in New Zealand, a year before PET. The two books have certain similarities: both have unreliable narrators, both engage the reader intellectually and emotionally, and both are beautifully written. Each was among the very best books this reader has read in each of their publication years.
Chidgey has published eight novels to date with a ninth due to appear next year. Although much appreciated at home she's a writer who has been seriously overlooked in North America to date. You will not regret being an early American explorer of her compelling works.
§ Yvonne Klein is a writer, translator, and retired college English professor who lives in Montreal. She's been editing RTE since 2008.
Reviewed by Yvonne Klein, August 2024
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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)
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