Welcome to Pecky’s book review (Photo: Florence Charvin / Design: Archi Banal)

BooksOctober 16, 2022

Pecky the magpie reviews The Axeman’s Carnival by Catherine Chidgey

Guest writer

Welcome to Pecky’s book review (Photo: Florence Charvin / Design: Archi Banal)

In Catherine Chidgey’s latest novel The Axeman’s Carnival, the story is told by a compelling magpie called Tama. We called upon writer Marty Smith to nudge her magpie, Pecky, to review Tama’s work.

My human is reading to me on the steps in the sun, because she loves me.

But it’s not … no, sliding into trance, Tama, cold change coming in from the South, a whiff of offal pit floating on the wind. Sky drawing down dark and grim over Marnie’s farm.

Little bird I still am, and I oh, I couldn’t drift, Tama, ear and eye all around for danger, scaredy-bird, distressed right from the start. You are right not to trust him. I can see it coming.

Oh, oh, tight in my throat.

Poor baby Tama in the blank-wall-angle house, flying blind, bashing into corners.

Oh, fluttery-scared at the dead birds in the freezer, I shriek Alarm! and lift up when he lifts the thing —

Bang on! with the sound of the skid and slide across the slippy lid, I think, Just right! as I thud-pound down to crouch in beside you, dusty behind the cylinder. Tama-too-small to see slippery surfaces in humans. Glass and mirrors.

True-clear the sounds down the valley when she takes you back, songs of low-nothing birds, dogs on their chains, and the quad bike, (I was lost from a farm) —my heart clutching like claws.

Too-small Tama, to be left out on your own reeking of humans.

Too-sad Tama, perched far below the rest of the birds, keeping a sight-line to the yolk-yellow house.

Do you think your father doesn’t see?

Glee! delight! when your father’s eyes light up blood-red in the sun. Ha, pierce human eyes! Drink their blood! Wind them up, Tama, it thrills them to believe we carry a drop of devil’s blood glowing ruby on our tongues. Enchantment! Raking up embers of spells, by the pricking of my thumbs, a prick of blood, the dark shadow drifting.

Messages we bring.

Keep to your kind, Tama. Like to like. When your birds turn their backs on you one by one, tainted Tama, oh, unease, unease — my heart grows small and hides.

Things do not go well for birds who go to humans of their own accord. (This is not true, says my human, those are other birds from far away.)

There you go building your nest, oh Tama gone-alone, winding the stems of the-way-of-the-wild through the solid blocks of the-way-of-the-house.

Criss cross, leaving air.

The strand, Tama, of Marnie’s hair — that you weave as lining, in and out, the ties of Marnie’s fertilised egg and its broken yolk, dead mothers and living mothers and babies and death by … did you have to be so rough? Does the male have to be so cruel?

One for sorrow.

The pattern is set. Naked dead women all over TV, powerless women all over the net. Wring your neck, run you down, your father is watching, watching. You hear his messages. Wilful Tama. You bet your pretty neck he knows who it is in your scrambled-egg house. You bet your pretty neck is an alarm, Tama, oh Tama, in the smashed-yellow house, your eye swivelling, my neck feathers pricking.

The Secretary, what does she know of the air and the bird? We see small and we hear. Saying you don’t understand what you say. Your voice is true, true. Messages you bring.

The author, and Marty Smith (Photo: Florence Charvin)

OF COURSE you mean what you say when you over-excite and shriek out your splats of shit. You stack up those words on purpose, I cackle and chortle but shut up, shut up

SHUT UP!

Helpless dead women all over TV, naked dead women all caught in the net.

All caught up, Tama, nothing good can come. Stuffing the soft centre of your nest, right round the bed and Marnie. Money Marnie, money Marnie. Aren’t you her little boy?

The whole world watching your tricks, vain Tama. Showing off. Puffed yourself up to fly on the air in a Superman cape, and you thought to tag onto the flock? Oho. Your sister followed every trick your father taught, she could take the sting from the wasp, but would she listen? Missed the twisty sting of a human trick, down, down she goes.

— Tama! When humans take birds, something always gets caught in the cross.

Criss cross. Leave some room for air.

The inter-connected-net. Stick-you-to-the-net trap. Marnie got stuck right in, eh? Just like the trap your sister sits in. Lured to it bit by bit like the bits of bacon that banged her into a trap. Delicious cherries. There she sits while the world flies by, deceiving herself.

Just like Marnie.

Rob’s not the only jealous one, you, with your strutting and prancing, your tricks and your jokes. Your revenge of restless, reckless prattle. Riding on a witch’s tongue, Tama. Blue-black at her white waist. Stench of offal pit on the air.

Seven for a secret never to be told.

Tears at the graveside. Priest chanting spell at the offal hole, Dust to dust. Watch out for ashiness. The beautiful box of the beautiful body (did you see the Crown Jewels? Stole a shiny diamond the size of an egg, talk about the pot calling the kettle black.)

Joy-screech of glee, Oh! Enchantment! when you tease and scream at the internet team on the Greeting card shoot. Bunch of cunts. I gobble down every reckless wicked language string, oh joy sounds, go on, go on— Oh, AHA! HA! I shrieked with delight, splat! —Take that!

Shouldn’t shit in your own nest, Tama. You’ve fouled up the way-of-the-home with sticky-beak visitors. Nothing good can come, it’s turning very Grimm. Needles and wickedness. Beside myself, I shriek out, Kidnap! Murder! Nevermore!

Woe, and all that, if they weren’t so stupid. (Mmm snappity-snap, tasted her blood).

You’re easily trapped, Tama. Too big for your boots. They lead you so easily in, all the cages clanging shut. Did you listen?

The dark shape of your father passing over.

Thirteen beware, it’s the devil himself.

The dog, Help, digging frantically for something that isn’t there.

Dark threads of mothers. Ange-I’m-just-down-the-road. Twisty, twisty Ange.

Have you seen the muscles on the man? That’s their mother, Barbara. Live currents.

Tick. Tick. Tick.

The shears buzz and hum, heat builds and the rain never comes.

Frayed with tension like the cable on the wool press, my heart scraping and thuddy.

Thirsty, he is. The fires are building. Drive a man to fever pitch, the farm running down. The magpies in the pines, watching the broken-egg house.

Old Quardle-do knew a thing or two.

Uh-huh, I think, the pattern is set. The woman always aborts the escape. We can’t afford to lose any, said Rob. We’ve had enough abortions.

Sick-stinking carnival, feral and stabbery jostle-needling. You bet your pretty neck.

All the King’s horses and all the King’s men

couldn’t put Humpty together again.

Shut up shut up shut up will you never shut up

the air thick with the singing of the blade, sharpening, sharpening, sparks spitting out into the tinder-dry air.

I fluff my feathers out, shrink into myself, my head right in my chest and I stare. My horror right down to my pin-pricks.

Oh, Tama.

BONUS CONTENT

Tama the magpie insisted on having the last word and so offered us exclusive rights to publish his Summer playlist:

With long hot days just around the corner, when you can spread yourself out on the ground and let the heat burrow in between every feather and lie there in a sun trance so your owners panic when they find you and think you’re dead, it’s time to think about a summer soundtrack. Here are a few of my favourites.

1 Adele, ‘Water Under the Bridge’, because she just gets heartbreak. Unlike me, she can’t sing two notes at once, but she gives it a good try and you have to admire her for that.

2 Milli Vanilli, ‘Baby Don’t Forget My Number’. It’s hard to choose my favourite song by this iconic duo – Rob and Fab could do unbelievable things with their voices, and in terms of style it’s hard to go past an oversized sports jacket teamed with a sassy bike short (unkempt youth of today, take note). If I have to narrow it down to a single track, though, this one really showcases MV’s incredible vocal resourcefulness. (Should I get braids?)

3 Miley Cyrus, ‘Wrecking Ball’. I too would like to smash things up while dressed in men’s underwear.

4 Waltzing Matilda, in recognition of my Australian lineage. I’m not sure what a billabong is, but I can’t stop saying it. Billabong. Billabong. Billabong. Billabong.

5 Joni Mitchell, ‘Both Sides Now’. A pretty song that made a lot of older women cry when Mitchell butchered it this year at a folk festival. My menopausal secretary blubbed through the whole sorry YouTube clip. Unlike Joni Mitchell, I have an eye on each side of my head, so I really can see things from both sides.

6 Bruce Springsteen, ‘I’m On Fire’. Haunting and atmospheric, it’s two-and-a-half moody minutes about a paedophile who experiences spontaneous human combustion.

7 David Hasselhoff’s cover of ‘Head On’ by the Jesus and Mary Chain, liked tens of times online. The Hoff is huge in Germany, like me, and this version of the song features excellent diction teamed with a thrust and peppiness entirely lacking in the original effort.

The Axeman’s Carnival by Catherine Chidgey (THWUP, $35) can be ordered from Unity Books Auckland and Wellington.

Keep going!

Image: Archi Banal

BooksOctober 14, 2022

The Unity Books bestseller chart for the week ending 14 October

The Spinoff Review of Books

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Image: Archi Banal

The only published and available best-selling indie book chart in New Zealand is the top 10 sales list recorded every week at Unity Books’ stores in High St, Auckland, and Willis St, Wellington.

AUCKLAND

1 Jumping Sundays: The Rise and Fall of the Counterculture in Aotearoa New Zealand by Nick Bollinger (Auckland University Press, $50)

What is a “jumping Sunday”, you ask? Kiran Dass recently wrote for the Guardian, “Jumping Sundays were a series of weekly ‘happenings’ that took place in Auckland’s Albert Park in the late 1960s. In a kaleidoscope of guitars, bongos, ponchos, beads and kaftans swirling among wafts of joss sticks and marijuana, hippies – derogatively referred to as freaks, weirdies, radicals and dropouts – would come together to enjoy live music and dance, listen to anti-war speeches and find a sense of community in a shared rejection of the monochromatic conservative landscape of New Zealand at the time.”

2 I’m Glad My Mom Died by Jennette McCurdy (Simon & Schuster, $45)

Look, it’s a provocative title. But Jennette McCurdy’s memoir (focusing on her dysfunctional child stardom – she starred in Nickelodeon’s iCarly and Cat & Sam) has been lauded as “a layered account of a woman reckoning with love and violence at once” by the Atlantic, and “measured, heartbreakingly poignant, and often laugh-out-loud-funny” by Shondaland. Hook ‘em in with controversy, make ‘em stay with darn good storytelling.

3 Towards a Grammar of Race in Aotearoa New Zealand edited by Arcia Tecun, Lana Lopesi and Anisha Sankar (Bridget Williams Books, $40)

We recently published an essay excerpt from this new BWB collection for your reading pleasure.

4 Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro (Faber & Faber, $23)

A cool douse of Ishiguro, featuring robots, neurotic mothers, sick children, technology and the desire for perfection gone sour… What more could you want from a dystopian novel?

5 Imagining Decolonisation by Rebecca Kiddle, Bianca Elkington, Moana Jackson, Ocean Ripeka Mercier, Mike Ross, Jennie Smeaton and Amanda Thomas (Bridget Williams Books, $15)

Every week of the past two years this gem has been on this very bestsellers list (every week, bar maybe two).

6 Straight Up by Ruby Tui (Allen & Unwin, $37)

If you’re ready to be inspired, Ruby Tui’s new memoir should do the trick. The publisher writes, “After a childhood filled with neglect Ruby yearned for another path. Determined not to let her upbringing limit her, she survived abuse, drugs and tragedy to become one of the most successful women’s rugby players in the world.”

7 Shrines of Gaiety by Kate Atkinson (Doubleday, $37)

New Atkinson! Everyone, applause.

Shrines of Gaiety is set in 1920s London – Soho nightlife, gangsters, jazz, and the dark reverberations of the Great War. Almost every reviewer is comparing Kate Atkinson to Dickens after this, so, a mighty feat. An example from Slate: “A wondrously intricate piece of narrative clockwork…The Jazz Age London of Shrines of Gaiety is nearly as merciless as Dickens’ Victorian metropolis and even more rife with crime and intrigue…Irresistibly pleasurable.”

8 Exiles by Jane Harper (Macmillan, $38)

The third instalment in Jane Harper’s Aaron Falk mystery series.

9 Best of Friends by Kamila Shamsie (Bloomsbury Circus, $33)

New novel from the author of Home Fire, which won the Women’s Prize for Fiction in 2018. Some alluring words of praise for Best of Friends:

“…an epic story that explores the ties of childhood friendship, the possibility of escape, the way the political world intrudes into the personal” – Observer

“The spirit of Elena Ferrante haunts this tale of a friendship forged in Karachi” – Sunday Times

“A profound novel about friendship. I loved it to pieces” – Madeline Miller

“A shining tour de force” – Ali Smith

10 Greta & Valdin by Rebecca K Reilly (Te Herenga Waka University Press, $35)

Why are readers still gobbling up Greta & Valdin? Stacey from Goodreads says, “The author of the book seems like a GC. It’s a good book in my opinion, and I like it that everyone is gay. I give it a nine out of nine Matariki stars.” Very well said.

WELLINGTON

1 I’m Glad My Mom Died by Jennette McCurdy (Simon & Schuster, $45)

2 The Story of Russia by Orlando Figes (Bloomsbury, $35)

The New York Times tidily summarises, “Orlando Figes provides valuable lessons about the importance of mythologizing the country’s past in his sweeping new survey of Russian history. A British historian whose previous books include social and cultural histories of Russia, Figes aims in this primer to explain how central narratives used to justify the current leadership have been shaped and exploited over centuries.”

3 Before the Coffee Gets Cold by Toshikazu Kawaguchi (Picador, $20)

The book that won’t leave us alone. It’s been two and a half years since Sam Brooks’ investigation and we still don’t know why.

4 The Marriage Portrait by Maggie O’Farrell (Knopf, $38)

The newest historical fiction from the author of Hamnet.

5 Lessons by Ian McEwan (Jonathon Cape, $37)

“This was insomniac memory, not a dream. It was the piano lesson again—an orange-tiled floor, one high window, a new upright in a bare room close to the sickbay. He was eleven years old, attempting what others might know as Bach’s first prelude from Book One of The Well-tempered Clavier, simplified version, but he knew nothing of that. He didn’t wonder whether it was famous or obscure. It had no when or where. He could not conceive that someone had once troubled to write it. The music was simply here, a school thing, or dark, like a pine forest in winter, exclusive to him, his private labyrinth of cold sorrow. It would never let him leave.”

6 Shrines of Gaiety by Kate Atkinson (Doubleday, $37)

7 Ottolenghi Test Kitchen: Extra Good Things by Yotam Ottolenghi & Noor Murad (Ebury Press, $55)

There’s a new Ottolenghi on the shelves, which indicates one crucial thing: Christmas season has officially begun.

This new offering focuses on delicious extras (harissa butter… tamarind dressing… mouth watering…) that you can use to boost multiple meals. The Telegraph says, “You could cook out of this for years and never eat a dull meal.”

8 Straight Up by Ruby Tui (Allen & Unwin, $37)

9 Babel, or the Necessity of Violence: An Arcane History of the Oxford Translators’ Revolution by R F Kuang (Voyager, $35)

New standalone fantasy novel by the author of The Poppy War Trilogy. Humans of Goodreads are divided, so we bestow a representative from each side of the aisle:

Sofia wrote, “By the end of Babel, I was shaking. Maybe out of grief, maybe out of awe; I felt as if I had watched something monumental flourish and collapse. And, for a minute, the world seemed so still, like the last few pages were a clip from a silent film. … I think, at some point in the near future, the enormity of what I have just read will come slamming into me. But for now, I will type away and try, in vain, to express the shockwave that I know is about to hit the literary world.”

Emily May wrote, “To me, it felt very much like reading a textbook. Dry regurgitation of a linguistics or postcolonial lecture. The author uses Oxford as a setting and the later Industrial Revolution as a historical template, adding very little that was new to any of it. The protagonist, Robin, is a very passive unmemorable character, surrounded by characters who are either equally benign and forgettable, often serving as mouthpieces for what feel like jarringly modern views, or else one-dimensional EVIL imperialist racists. Where is the unique fantasy flair? Why are all the characters lacking in nuance?”

10 He Reo Tuku Iho: Tangata Whenua and Te Reo Māori by Awanui Te Huia (Te Herenga Waka University Press, $30)

From the publisher’s blurb: “Drawing upon findings from the national research project Manawa Ū ki te Reo Māori, which surveyed motivations and barriers for Māori language acquisition and use, Te Huia encourages readers to explore how they can journey back towards te reo Māori in daily life. … At the heart of He Reo Tuku Iho is the knowledge that it is possible for Māori to return te reo to minds, hearts and mouths.”