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Newsroom
27-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Newsroom
For the love of Chidgey
There is something obviously and explicitly special going on with the reading public's adoration of Catherine Chidgey. It has been going on for some time now, first elevated when she wrote her first bestseller The Wish Child (2016), confirmed when she wrote Remote Sympathy (2020), blown up when she wrote The Axeman's Carnival (2022), and now coalesced into a kind of near-worship with her latest novel, The Book of Guilt – the biggest-selling book in New Zealand right now of any kind and by any author ie local or international, with a signing queue at the recent Auckland Writers Festival going out the door and into the rain. She inspires a feverish quality in readers, more so even than Eleanor Catton, not merely because the Booker winner lives remotely in Britain (Chidgey is a citizen of the republic of Waikato). Catton's work is neither as intimate or felt as Chidgey's fiction. The hype is real. The latest example was in the responses from readers in the latest ReadingRoom giveaway contest. A free book is offered each week. Some of them are very popular contests and some of them generate very entertaining replies to whatever question is posed. Nothing compares to the responses in the contest to win The Book of Guilt (as well as Delirious, by Damien Wilkins). Readers were asked to say something interesting about either author. One or two chose to make comments about Wilkins ('Damien once stayed in my house in Queenstown, but I was away on a film job up north. He might've put a book I didn't read signed and left in the bookshelf in the guest's bedroom'). Everyone else had something to say about Chidgey – and they were not always complimentary, not all of them from fans. There was a strange frisson going on within the 100 or so replies. A selection follows. Buddy Mikaere Last year I visited the States on a tour to retrace the American Civil War. Back here in Aotearoa I am involved in a project that will see the establishment of a NZ Wars Centre – Te Putake O Te Riri. As the NZ Wars of the 1860s were happening at the same time that the civil war was raging in America – I wanted to see how they had depicted that struggle at various battlefields and museums. At the departure airport, my partner Fi gave me a copy of The Axeman's Carnival to read on the plane. I loved it, finishing it at my Chicago hotel the day after I arrived. I flew to Washington and after a few days wandering about, went south to Fredericksburg in Virginia. On the outskirts of Fredericksburg I stayed with some Facebook friends who lived in the woodlands that surround the city. Over dinner that night – I think it was during a conversation about woodpeckers – I told the lady of the house about Tama the magpie, the central 'character' in Axeman and gave her the book to read. At breakfast the next morning, my red-eyed hostess told me she had stayed up all night reading the book which she couldn't put down. She said that despite the cultural differences she was completely captured by the power of the narrative and the fiery finale of the book in particular. I should explain that the couple made their living from their on-line consultancy and – just like Tama – they needed to have a 'presence' to attract and hold their prospective customers. The woodland setting of their house, the impatient subdued hammering of the woodpeckers in the trees – all combined to enliven the Chidgey narrative and bring it to a charged emotional level for my lovely hostess. As a result of that book I now have two great friends for life, and they look forward to visiting with me in the Coromandel. I might even introduce them to our local magpies. Madeleine Setchell I read recently in the Listener that Catherine and her husband had a long struggle with infertility. She may have spoken about this before, but it was not something I was aware of until recently. The article stated, 'For 13 years, she couldn't write. She and husband Alan Bekhuis, a mechanical engineer and daguerreotypist, wanted more than anything to have a child. Those 13 awful, long years were subsumed with IVF attempts and the debilitating side effects of the drugs used in the treatments. 'Alice was born in 2015. She was carried by a surrogate, who is now part of their family. The couple donated sperm to another woman desperate to have a child. That child is also now part of their family. She says, of Alice, 'She is the joy of my life'.' I thought she was so very brave to talk about this, despite infertility being very common there are still many reasons people don't speak about it publicly, or even to their families. I know Catherine's words will provide comfort to readers struggling with their own infertility challenges, and I hope, in some small way, they will know they are not alone. Full disclaimer, I am the Chairperson of Fertility NZ, a small but mighty charity that walks alongside all New Zealanders facing infertility. So perhaps I am on the lookout for these things. But it did really strike me a few weeks ago how great it was she included this in her interview. I too have a much wanted, and much loved daughter named Alice. Veronica Harrod I've had two personal interactions with well known authors. Keri Hulme of The Bone People who wrote a letter back to me in response to the letter I sent her, and Catherine Chidgey who I communicated with on one of the many digital platforms that have made letter writing a dying art in its own right. Perhaps that was why things went pear shaped. I'd finished her book The Axeman's Carnival which, like all her books I've read, I enjoyed immensely. But after I finished reading it I wondered why all the publicity I'd seen rarely mentioned the violence against the main female character Marnie. Instead it was all about the magpie as if the violence against Marnie was something unpleasant to be ignored. A common story in this country unfortunately. Then I told her about the magpies I had known. About one who a former neighbour of mine gave the name Mr Wu. It used to visit a few houses in the vicinity for a feed and to make a nuisance of itself. The first time Mr Wu visited me the magpie stalked in the open front door squawking for a feed. After that when Mr Wu visited he would stalk around the computer desk, where I was sitting, chewing on wires with his beak, peering at me from the top of the desktop computer or falling asleep in my arms when tired and needing a nap. He would make himself comfortable in my arms, his beak would curl into his chest, his eyes would close and he would be out for the count until it was time to get busy again. I also told her about a magpie I had rescued from the side of the road as I was driving home from work one evening. It was flopping around with its wings outstretched so I pulled over and discovered it had almost had both its feet severed. I don't know what had caused the injury all I knew was the magpie would be vulnerable and in pain from the injury. So I grabbed a jumper from the front seat of my car, threw it over the magpie and bundled it in the car before turning around and driving to a local vet. A vet on duty took the magpie into another room. After a while he came out and said there wasn't much that could be done. I said I didn't own the magpie. I had found it on the side of the road flapping its wings and clearly distressed. He said it was unusual for the magpie to let me pick it up and transport in a moving vehicle. I agreed the best course of action was to put the magpie to sleep. Unfortunately the author found my story distressing – which it is in one way – but in another way the magpie was fortunate I responded to its distress. I was surprised by her reaction because The Axeman's Carnival is a book based on violence and a strong vein of violence runs through her novels often. I even said with some incredulity, 'But your book is about violence.' Perhaps though it's one thing to describe violence in a book but quite another to be in the thick of violence. Helen Nugteren I am definitely not a follower of fashion and hullabaloo does my head in. Give me Owen Marshall any day. I smile in recognition of his superb craftsmanship. Once the shouting about Catherine Chidgey has died down, I might get around to borrowing the new one from the mobile library in Arthur's Pass. Jan Pryor I love both authors for different reasons. Damien scares the bejesus out of me with his gentle terrifying depiction of ageing; I adore the Chidge because she recognised my genius and awarded my short story 1st prize in a competition a few years ago. Susan Gresson I waited in line at the book launch for Pet because I wanted to tell Catherine that after reading Remote Sympathy several times and contemplating the different perspectives I couldn't decide where my sympathy lay. The book places the reader in a position not to judge but to feel what it was like to live in a period where moral issues were not only dangerous but ambivalent. She replied, 'I couldn't make up my mind either.' It is this quality of her work that I love. she doesn't prescribe, she allows the reader to embrace the character's perspective. In a time where there are so many extreme and definite opinions, it is so refreshing to be treated like a competent reader to come to your own conclusion & struggle with the banality of evil. Patricia Fenton Back in the last millennium we were living in a charming little German village in the State of Hessen. My husband reckoned we might as well have had a flashing Kiwi sign above our apartment. Being in Central Europe, family, friends and acquaintances found their way to us, and they were always welcome. One day our daughter, Virginia, phoned and asked if her friend Cath, and Cath's mother, Pat, could come and stay with us. Cath was on a Goethe scholarship and her mother was visiting from New Zealand. 'You won't regret it,' Virginia said. 'They're good company, and Cath is destined for great things. She's going to be famous.' Our daughter was right – on all counts. The Book of Guilt by Catherine Chidgey (Te Herenga Waka University Press, $38) is available in bookstores nationwide.
The Guardian
21-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
The Book of Guilt by Catherine Chidgey review – this dystopia could have been extraordinary
In 2016 Catherine Chidgey published her fourth novel, The Wish Child, a child's-eye view of Nazi Germany. Since then the much-garlanded New Zealander has contrived to be not only conspicuously prolific but also intriguingly unpredictable. Though she returned to wartime Germany in her Women's prize-longlisted Holocaust novel, Remote Sympathy, her work has ranged from the coming-of-age psychological thriller Pet to The Beat of the Pendulum, a 'found' novel that drew on everything from conversations and social media posts to news bulletins and even satnav instructions to create a picture of one woman's life over a year. The Axeman's Carnival, published in the UK last year, was partly narrated by a magpie. Like The Wish Child it won the Acorn prize for fiction, making Chidgey the only writer to win New Zealand's most prestigious prize twice. The Book of Guilt appears to mark another departure. Chidgey describes her ninth novel as her 'first foray into dystopian fiction' and, while the book purports to be set in England in 1979 with a female prime minister newly ensconced in Downing Street, it is not the country we know. In Chidgey's alternate universe, the second world war ended not in 1945 with allied victory, but in 1943 when the assassination of Hitler by German conspirators led to a swiftly negotiated peace treaty. Subsequent collaboration across Europe has ensured that progress in biological and medical science, already significantly advanced, has accelerated, fuelled by shared research that includes the grotesque experiments carried out on prisoners in Nazi death camps. The shadow of those atrocities lingers over 13-year-old identical triplets Vincent, William and Lawrence, the last three remaining occupants of a secluded New Forest children's home, part of the government's Sycamore Scheme. Supervised by three 'Mothers', each working an eight-hour daily shift, the boys do their lessons and their exercises and take their medicine, in constant battle with a sickness which, though its symptoms vary from boy to boy and month to month, is referred to only as the Bug. They long to get well so that they will finally be granted the wish of every Sycamore child before them and be sent to the Big House in Margate, an earthly seaside paradise with sun-soaked golden sands and unlimited access to the Dreamland amusement park. But though the boys pore over the dog-eared Margate brochure, 'we never dreamt of trying to escape', an older, wiser Vincent confesses as the novel opens. 'Those were happy days, before I knew what I was.' Since then the Scheme has been abandoned, the Sycamore homes sold off. People do not like to talk about it, Vincent admits. Nobody wants to feel guilty. If all this sounds reminiscent of Kazuo Ishiguro's most famous novel Never Let Me Go, that is because, in many ways, it absolutely is. The similarities go far beyond the late 1970s institutional setting. Like Kathy, Ruth and Tommy, Ishiguro's trio of students at Hailsham, the Sycamore boys know they are different, special even, and yet their lives share Hailsham's whiff of wartime make-do-and-mend, where the lessons are rudimentary and everything is secondhand. Like the Hailsham students, the triplets are sheltered not only from the truth of their circumstances but also from any meaningful contact with or grasp of the world that fears and exploits them. Like them, they will only gradually and painfully come to understand their real purpose. Vincent's first-person narration addresses the reader directly, recalling Kathy's conversational style. And yet, for all the inevitable comparisons, it becomes clear as Chidgey's novel unfolds that it is by no means a clone of Ishiguro's. While both novels take as their starting point the grave dangers posed by unfettered scientific advancement, Never Let Me Go is, at its heart, a meditation on mortality, an exploration of humankind's profound resistance to the idea that we must all eventually be parted from those whom we love. Ishiguro does not seek to rationalise or explain the world in which the book is set. His interest is personal, not political. The Book of Guilt, by contrast, unfolds an alternate political reality, intercutting Vincent's account with two other parallel narratives. Nancy is a girl held as a kind of prisoner by her adoring parents, while the harassed Minister of Loneliness is charged with winding up the Scheme. They combine to create a compulsively readable story that raises profound questions not only about the power of the state to dehumanise parts of our society but about our complicity in that power, the doublethink that permits us simultaneously to know a truth and not know it, to see and somehow contrive not to believe, dehumanising us in its turn. These questions run through all Chidgey's work: they are the connective tissue that binds her seemingly contrasting projects and, in 2025, as the US turns its back on the world, they are more urgent than ever. The Book of Guilt is written with insight and brio, deftly balancing darkness and light, depth and pace. Set in its own distinctive time and space, it could have been extraordinary. Instead the ghost of Ishiguro stalks its pages, dragging behind it the inevitable clanking comparisons and fatally undermining the integrity of the world Chidgey has so painstakingly created. Sign up to Inside Saturday The only way to get a look behind the scenes of the Saturday magazine. Sign up to get the inside story from our top writers as well as all the must-read articles and columns, delivered to your inbox every weekend. after newsletter promotion The Book of Guilt by Catherine Chidgey is published by John Murray (£20). To support the Guardian, order your copy at Delivery charges may apply.
