Book Review: The Axeman’s Carnival by Catherine Chidgey

Everywhere, the birds: sparrows and skylarks and thrushes, starlings and bellbirds, fantails and pipits – but above them all and louder, the magpies. We are here and this is our tree and we’re staying and it is ours and you need to leave and now.
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 of 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 with it), 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.

I didn’t expect to like this book so much. I don’t remember where I read about it, but as someone who’s very interested in birds, especially when interacting with humans, this book seemed the perfect summer read.

This is a story about domestic abuse seen through the eyes of a magpie. It may not sound very appealing, but Tama (the magpie)’s voice was very well crafted, with repetitions and mannerisms that made his speech unique. Tama’s unique voice describing his observations as an unreliable narrator, creating a certain dissonance between what he thinks and what he sees, is the authentic magic of this book. Like a child who doesn’t completely understand what they see, but intuits that things may not be as okay as the adults are trying to make them believe, Tama describes the cruelty of domestic abuse, many times not understanding what he sees, but making the reader an accomplice to terrible events.

Despite how very hard this book is at times, there are also plenty of funny moments protagonized by Tama, who often repeats what others say in a way that doesn’t make it clear whether he understands what he hears or if he just normalizes many spoken things that shouldn’t be normal. I also liked Tama’s speech about magpie lore, how he sees sunrises and sunsets, how he talks about his life in the egg, how terrible his father is. His sensory way of talking is sometimes more poetry than simple speech.

There is also tension in the book. Rob is the husband who drinks too much, who is jealous without limits, who blames Marnie for existing, but he’s also the treasured son-in-law who is too handsome, too good. Because domestic abuse wouldn’t be a thing if sometimes our closest ones had their eyes open.

I fully enjoyed this book from beginning to end, laughing with Tama, hurting for Marnie, and hating Rob. It’s been one of my favorite books this summer, one of those books that leaves an empty feeling that it seems no other book will fill.

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lomeraniel

My name is Elena. Since I was a little child I loved science fiction and fantasy, and I can’t resist a good novel. In 2015, while wait I started to listen to audiobooks and I discovered the pleasure in being able to read while doing my daily tasks, so there’s always an audiobook playing on my phone. If you see me with my Bluetooth headphones on, please be gentle, I get easily startled.

I live with my boyfriend, which I met during my six-year stay in Belgium, four cockatiels, eight lovebirds, and a hamster in Madrid, Spain; and I like to spend my free time knitting and sewing while listening to audiobooks.