The Axeman's Carnival

The Axeman’s Carnival, by Catherine Chidgey might just be the strangest book I’ve ever read. It’s also brilliant, dark, hilarious, and unnerving. Not to mention the fact that the writing is gorgeous.

“A long long time ago, when I was a little chick, not even a chick but a pink and naked thing, a scar a scrap a scrape fallen on roots and wriggling, when I was catching my death and all I knew of sky was the feel of feathers above me, the belly of black as warm as a cloud above me, when I was blind, my eyes unsprouted seeds, my eyes dots of gravel stuck under skin, when I was a beak opening for nothing nothing nothing, she lifted me into her pillowed palm.”

The passage you just read is the voice of Tama, a magpie who falls out of the nest and is rescued by a grieving woman, who nurses him back to health.

In fact, the whole novel is from the magpie’s point-of-view.

You might be thinking, Oh please.

Or WTF?

But this books works in every way and on any level you can imagine.

Marnie and her husband Rob, a sheep farmer, live in the remote high country of New Zealand. Marnie has recently miscarried their first child and times are tough economically. Rob is depressed. He drinks too much; he’s sometimes violent.

Nine golden axes hang over their bed in a row, Rob’s prizes for winning the Axeman’s Carnival nine years in a row. He’s practicing obsessively for the upcoming tenth, adding to the tension.

He's angry when Marnie rescues the bird. It’s not natural to keep him inside, he says. But when lets him go, he’s harassed by his father and returns to what feels like home to him now. Marnie names him Tama. He sleeps in the crib in what would have been a nursery. She covers him with a yellow blanket, gives him a stuffed bear.

Tama is the quintessential magpie: intelligent, naughty, playful. A mimic, a provocateur, a thief. What I loved most about The Axeman’s Carnival was Tama’s “commentary” on what was happening around him though words and phrases he picks up, listening to people talk. Sometimes the commentary is laugh-out-loud random like, “This was no suicide, Trent. See the spatter patterns?” or “Me and my friends like twerking” or “I will take you down, motherfucker.”

Sometimes he’s cunningly right on topic. When Marnie’s husband Rob behaves like a jerk to his farm workers, Tama calls out from the barn rafters, “Don’t be a prick.”

He’s a genius at mimicking the essence of each character. Rob’s rage, Marnie’s mother’s insensitivity, her sister’s shallowness so that we’re often simultaneously horrified and amused.

He’s also a mirror for the human world, which, seen though his eyes, seems as exotic, bizarre and improbable as the idea of a magpie narrating a human story.

Marnie dotes on Tama. She makes him a pirate’s hat, a nurse’s hat, a top hat, and bunny ears. She dresses him as Batman. When she posts photos of him on Twitter; they go viral and, in no time at all, Tama has thousands of followers. Inevitably, this leads to Tama products for sale, which Marnie hopes will solve their financial problems.

Then Tama’s fans start appearing at the farm and total chaos ensues.

Meanwhile, Rob’s rage and hopelessness grow. He can be tender with the baby sheep, sometimes bringing them into the house to save them, but he’s brutal, too, lopping of their tails, their bleating like the cries of babies. He loves Marnie but his jealousy keeps him from loving her the right way.

And by the time the carnival starts, he’s like a ticking bomb.

Along the way, Tama has conversations with his sister magpie, who tells him the story of their lives. He tries to make peace with his father magpie, who won’t forgive him for abandoning the family.

Marnie’s mother is making Marnie and her sister sexy dresses on red fabric printed with pistols for a performance of “A Bushel and a Peck” at the Axeman’s Carnival as a surprise to their husbands—against Marnie’s better judgment. She knows it will make Rob jealous.

Tama whistles songs like “I Want to Know What Life Is” and “A Total Eclipse of the Heart” at the most inappropriate moments. “Don’t you dare!” becomes his rallying cry and his friends beg him to say it over and over.

I love a book that make me wonder how the writer even thought of the idea for it.

I mean, hmmm, I think I’ll write a novel about a marriage in freefall on a sheep farm in New Zealand from the point of view of magpie.

I’d really, really love to know!