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A dazzling portrayal of humanity and the natural world that perfectly balances violence and humor.
Tama is just a helpless chick when he is rescued by Marnie, and this is where his story might have ended. "If it keeps me awake," says Marnie's husband Rob, a farmer, "I'll have to wring its neck." But with Tama come new possibilities for the couple's future. Tama can speak, and his fame is growing. Outside, in the pines, his father warns him of the wickedness wrought by humans. Indoors, Marnie confides in him about her violent marriage. The more Tama sees, the more the animal and the human worlds—and all the precarity, darkness and hope within them—bleed into one another. Like a stock truck filled with live cargo, the story moves inexorably towards its dramatic conclusion: the annual Axeman's Carnival.
Part trickster, part surrogate child, part witness, Tama the magpie is the star of this story. Though what he says aloud to humans is often nonsensical (and hilarious), the tale he tells us weaves a disturbingly human sense. The Axeman's Carnival is Catherine Chidgey at her finest—comic, profound, poetic and true.
"To the oft-invoked online debate of man vs. bear, Tama offers a new question: man vs. bird. The magpie narrator offers more nuance and understanding to human relations than do most people. Chidgey (Pet) is a skilled storyteller and doesn't stop surprising with this gorgeously haunting work. Endlessly faceted and highly recommended for book clubs." —Library Journal (starred review)
"The Axeman's Carnival is a stunning and captivating story about the pressures of farming life and the meaning of family, and Chidgey is at the absolute top of her game." —Booklist
"Told in the voice of a magpie, with humor and wisdom, this unflinching portrait of nature picks at the thin veil between the elemental violence and drama of both human and animal worlds." —Shelf Awareness
"An arresting point of view guides readers of Catherine Chidgey's The Axeman's Carnival, which is chattily narrated by a pet magpie called Tama... It makes for a gamesome against-the-odds tale." —Wall Street Journal
"A gorgeous, sublime exploration of the natural world and the powerful, perhaps unbreakable bonds that can exist between its human and nonhuman inhabitants... Chidgey's novel is an extraordinary achievement: Like Tama, it soars." —Washington Post
"A writer of formidable resources, a deft stylist possessed of uncanny imaginative acuity." —The Guardian (UK)
This information about The Axeman's Carnival was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Catherine Chidgey's novels have been published to international acclaim. Her first, In a Fishbone Church, won Best First Book at the New Zealand Book Awards and at the Commonwealth Writers' Prize. Her second, Golden Deeds, was a Notable Book of the Year in The New York Times Book Review and a Best Book in the LA Times. Her novel Remote Sympathy (Europa, 2021) was shortlisted for the Dublin Literary Award and longlisted for the Women's Prize for Fiction. Her novel Pet (Europa, 2023) was a New York Times Editors' Choice and a New Yorker and Washington Post Best Book of the Year. Pet is also long-listed for the 2024 Dublin Literary Award and the Acorn Prize for Fiction at the Ockham Book Awards, New Zealand's most prestigious literary award, which Chidgey has won twice, for The Wish Child and The Axeman's Carnival. She lives in Ngāruawāhia and lectures in Creative Writing at the University of Waikato.
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