IN A FISHBONE CHURCH
By Catherine Chidgey
(Australian Review Of Books, November 1998)
The literary form seems well equipped to explore the slippery subject of memory. Is it because memory often appears to us as an inner dialogue, or monologue? Is memory like a text that is continually being written, amended, moulded into an intelligible narrative?
In her novel In a Fishbone Church, New Zealand newcomer Catherine Chidgey is concerned with the poetics of memory, the enchanted and evanescent nature of experience. For Chidgey, our souls are hermetic battlefields where a constant war with the past is waged.
The first part of the narrative orbits around the diaries of Clifford Stilton, a local Wellington butcher with a keen interest in fossils. After Clifford's death, the diaries are passed on to his son Gene, and become a catalyst for a personal crisis of sorts. It is clear that the diaries have been written mainly for Gene's benefit, and they reveal a secret philosophical side to the tranquil and devoted family man.
The diaries act as a gateway to the main themes of the novel. Gene's wife, Etta, and their daughters Bridget and Christina soon join the chorus and take centre stage. Fishbone eschews a chronological approach for an episodic one, switching between the past and the present (in fact, many pasts and many presents) and between Wellington, Sydney and Berlin. In this tumultuous and complex fabric, the ossifications of the past are laden with meaning: old toys, locks of baby hair, a statue of the Virgin Christina glimpses in her childhood family drives, Gene's obsession with war history, and of course the fossils Clifford hunts and cleans out obsessively. But these objects can easily become cumbersome and haunt the lives of the characters in dark ways.
The narrative is driven by theme rather than plot, and although the sequence of episodes may seem aimless, it follows an enigmatic logic that gradually sinks in. The themes may sound ambitious, but the result is achieved with subtlety and unobtrusive effortlessness. Chifley's writing seduces the reader with its generous and unexpected humour, its incidental poetry and candid ear for dialogue. Though simple and unadorned, it weaves a rarefied atmosphere in which the everyday comes to seem extraordinary and small details carry vast significance. It also often evokes a menacing and troubled mood. When the extraordinary irrupts in the shape of Clifford's ghost, or when Etta is swallowed by a giant trout (the episode that gives the novel its name), it is accepted as a normal extension of things. Like Clifford's fossils, the events in these lives may seem like common rocks, but on close inspection reveal an extraordinary treasure.
In short, a rare novel, and a quiet and admirable achievement.
Andres Vaccari
posted by Andres Vaccari @ 2:32 PM