NOMINATING LIBRARY COMMENTS

The well-deserved winner of the Jannn Medlicott Acorn Prize for Fiction in this years’ Ockham New Zealand Book Awards, the opening lines of Catherine Chidgey’s wonderful book read like poetry. Myth, alliteration, and descriptive language spill from Chidgey’s imagination to create a setting so incredibly Kiwi, you can almost smell the woodsmoke and sweat. The Axeman’s Carnival is a thoroughly modern tale told from the unique point of view of Tama(gotchi); a magpie, who goes viral on the internet. Chidgey portrays domestic violence, hidden, unspoken, mistaken, regretted, repeated, and the violence towards animals that is often a part of farm life – pest control in the form of poison or gun, euthanasia perpetrated on sheep, or dogs who have outlived their usefulness, and the constant threat of death – death by car, death by cold, death by gun, death by dog… Absolutely wonderful! (Christchurch City Libraries). Such a clever, profound and entertaining novel “gothic in feel” with a mischievous magpie as the book’s narrator. This allows the book to really examine the absurdity of humans often hilariously from an outsider’s perspective. It is also a brilliant portrayal of both humanity and the natural world. This novel really does have everything. (Wellington Public Library)