Her unquiet mind

A very rude magpie may still be dogging her thoughts, but one of our most successful authors has managed another novel worth squawking about.

- MICHELE HEWITSON

Catherine Chidgey is a very good writer. Everybody knows that.

What is less well known about her is that she is also a talent wrangler and spruiker for, of all unlikely things, magpie-related merch.

Her 2022 book The Axeman's Carnival, which is narrated by a talking magpie, Tama, won the fiction prize at the 2023 Ockham New Zealand Book Awards. It came with a most welcome cheque for $64,000. Chidgey claims to have never seen a penny of it. Tama had his own hotel room. He got hold of the credit card and ordered $64,000 worth of fried cockroaches from room service.

That was unfortunate. "Yeah, he got to the credit card. It was carnage in that room." As any star-maker knows, if you create a celebrity, you create a monster.

He has his own X and Instagram accounts (@ TamaMagpie). He is rude, avaricious and bossy as buggery. "I'm a T-shirt! I'm a coffee mug! I'm a motherfucking throw pillow!" Get your magpie merch today - just in time for the swooping season," he ordered last August.

He complains a lot. The Bird of the Year competition? "STILL no fucking magpie on the list of candidates." He claims to be a feminist. "Happy International Women's Day to all the smokin' hot babes. Call me." He is a very rude bird.

Tama is outside her bedroom window while we're talking. Can she put him on the phone? "He's asking me, "What's she gonna pay for my contribution to the interview?"

He's a bad, bad bird. He does actually exist.

"He's very real to me in quite a spooky way. He's taken up residence; he's nesting in my brain." I have a suspicion that Chidgey might, just might, be Tama. She is adept at slipping in and out of her books. Tama is mischievous. She is mischievous. She says she has a habit of blurting out inappropriate things at inappropriate times. That sounds suspiciously Tama-like.