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A magpie named Tama, charming, recently engulfed my reading life. Axeman's brought emotions down to the cellular level, but softened it with a relatable psychology. Family drama here is spread out over waters, mountains, sky, stream in cunning, stunning, sometimes absurd, but always tender and piercing ways. New Zealand author Catherine Chidgey possessed me in her last book, Pet, about a peculiar teacher and her pet pupils. She pushed the envelope of teacher’s pet and then incinerated it with comic and tragic deft. In this newest novel, she blazed a new trail and refreshed some common tropes, bequeathing a magpie with human cognition and pov to narrate the events of the story. Tama is a hero, a victim, an inquisitive witness. An orphaned (rejected) magpie. Also a keen sense of humor!

Sheep farmers Marnie and Rob are struggling financially and in other ways that are gradually revealed. Rob is abusive when he drinks, and Marnie suffers and stays. You’ve already read the all-too-familiar themes of Marnie and Rob’s marriage, but not like this! Tama is Marnie’s magpie that she saved from certain death, and now he follows Marnie everywhere. She posts him on Twitter, in funny costumes, like it’s magpie Halloween every day. He soon becomes a Twitter sensation, with enough followers to make him a trail-blazing influencer.

Morally ambiguous PR techies contact and then advise the couple to up their game and make money on everything from coffee cups to underwear with Tama’s picture emblazoned on every item, plus a Tama doll in life-sized form. Folks from all over the world fall in love with Tama, and a few peep out their location and arrive uninvited to take a peek. Comical twists on celebrity and privacy are mixed with some serious issues of domestic abuse. And grief.

Tama speaks in witty code, in stark disclosures and funny, flip, discursive streaks. His mimicking has manifold meanings---and consequences. (Actually, some magpies do chatter as convincingly human!) He can be a melancholy magpie, too. He is whimsical but also empathizes.

Rejected by his family for embracing the human world, Tama is torn between his species and ours. His sadness and alienation from family made me heartsick for his troubles. His mother died via vehicular bird slaughter, and his brothers from the cold. Tama’s ache for his magpie family is palpable.

“And at night the ghosts of my brothers came in the peace and bloody quiet, and the ghost of my mother too, and they sang to me through the glass, their voices the wind in the pine trees, their voices the rain, their voices the swish and gnaw of something underground. And the ghosts of my brothers were only feathers, and the ghost of my mother was only bones. Death by car, they sang. Death by cold.�

Rob is pissed at capitulating his privacy but is also preoccupied with training to win his tenth trophy for the Axeman’s Carnival. When he’s sober, he’s pretty anal and in his own private Idaho. His arms are the strength of many, think about that.

I spent research time on magpies—I’ve always had a secret desire to go birding. I watched them on YouTube and became an overnight enthisiast. They are phenomenal. They got skills! Of course, allow some poetic license for the author. He's an intimate witness to Rob and Marnie’s lives.

Secondary characters, such as Marnie’s sister, Angie, and brother-in-law, are material in interconnected ways. Marnie’s mother is passive aggressive, and provides a key to understanding Marnie’s life choices. Angie is emotionally supportive, but also has her own life agenda with her husband. Chidgey never compromises character for plot, and gives them all a rich nature.

I was swept away by this sleeper novel. It’s a proper pick for literary and mainstream devotees, as the thrilling plot and nuanced characters will keep you flying high from start to finish. Will make my top ten list of 2024.