Catherine Chidgey’s new novel – about the relationship between a woman and a bird – reminded me of another work in which a nonhuman protagonist’s mother-love propels the plot: Stephen Spielberg’s haunting, underrated 2001 film, “A.I.” Chidgey’s book is a gorgeous, sublime exploration of the natural world and the powerful, perhaps unbreakable bonds that can exist between its human and nonhuman inhabitants.
It is also a domestic tragedy, a nail-biting noir and a sly satire of viral online celebrity – a difficult feat to pull off, but Chidgey, author of several critically acclaimed novels, including most recently “Pet,” does it beautifully. Europa “The Axeman’s Carnival” By Catherine Chidgey Europa Editions. 336 pages, paperback.
$18 The story centers on Tama, an Australian magpie scooped up by Marnie, the wife of a New Zealand sheep farmer. Marnie’s husband, Rob, warns her not to grow attached to the newborn bird. Still grieving over the miscarriage she suffered a year earlier, Marnie ignores her husband’s demands that she release the bird back into the wild.
“It’s not normal to keep a wild bird inside. It’s not kind,” he tells her. At first, he seems not unreasonable.
Marnie does attempt to release Tama (whose name is derived from the digital Tamagotchi pet), but his magpie family attacks him, and he flies back to his human home, crying Mar, Mar, Mar, Mar. Even Rob agrees that the bird sounds like a child asking for its mother, and he do.