In a Fishbone Church

by Catherine Chidgey

When Clifford Stilton dies, his son Gene crams his carefully kept diaries into a hall cupboard - but Clifford's words have too much life in them to be ignored, and start to permeate his family's world.Clifford taught Gene about how to find rocks and fossils, and about how to kill birds and fish. Gene passes on a similar inheritance to his daughters, Bridget and Christina - they have their own ways of digging and discovering the past, keeping an account of life, watching out for the varieties of death that lie hidden. Etta their mother tells a very different story of her 1940s childhood. "In a Fishbone Church" spans continents and decades. From the Berlin rave scene to the Canterbury duck season, from the rural 1950s to the cosmopolitan present, these five vivid lives cohere in a deeply affecting and exhilarating novel. "In a Fishbone Church," Catherine Chidgey's acclaimed debut, won the Hubert Church Award for Best First Book in the Montana New Zealand Book Awards, the Adam Award, the regional Commonwealth Prize for Best First Novel, and a Betty Trask Award in the UK, where it was also longlisted for the Orange Prize. First published in 1998, it has been a bestseller in New Zealand and has been published around the world.

Genres: Fiction, Novels, Literary Fiction, Family, 20th Century

280 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1998

About the author

Catherine Chidgey is a novelist and short story writer whose work has been published to international acclaim. In a Fishbone Church won Best First Book at the New Zealand Book Awards and at the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize in her region. In the UK it won the Betty Trask Award and was longlisted for the Orange Prize. Golden Deeds was Time Out’s book of the year, a Notable Book of the Year in The New York Times and a Best Book in the LA Times. She has won the Prize in Modern Letters, the Katherine Mansfield Award, the Katherine Mansfield Fellowship, the Janet Frame Fiction Prize, and the Acorn Foundation Fiction Prize for The Wish Child. Remote Sympathy was shortlisted for the Dublin Literary Award and the Jann Medlicott Acorn Prize for Fiction, and was longlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction. The Axeman's Carnival won the Acorn at the New Zealand Book Awards - the country's biggest literary prize.

Raised in Wellington, New Zealand, Chidgey was educated at Victoria University and in Berlin, where she held a DAAD scholarship for post-graduate study in German literature. She lives in Cambridge and is an Associate Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Waikato.

Reviews

[Sarah McMullan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Rereading while I wait for THE BOOK OF GUILT. ❤️💛💚

[Tim · Rating 3 out of 5]

There is a lot to like about this novel: it is crisply written, engaging, and contains some memorable characters and incidents. Its chief weakness is that it starts out focusing on one character, family patriarch Clifford Stilton, but ends up being more about his children and grandchildren. They are supposed to be under the influence of Clifford and his diary, but that influence never adds up to anything conclusive.[return][return]The novel is strongly reminiscent of a family memoir. Elizabeth Jane Howard, to take one example, is a writer who is excellent at taking this kind of material and shaping it into a coherent and moving story. But this is Catherine Chidgey's first novel, and, at least at that stage of her career, she did not have the same firm grasp on her material. It's an entertaining and well-written read, but ultimately something of a let-down.

[sisterimapoet · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read as part of compass journey page

[Deb · Rating 2 out of 5]

Book club book. This went nowhere for me. Three generations of characters weave in and out, bouncing back and forth in time. It needs a plot.
I thought the fossils and the old diaries could have pulled this book together, but they didn't.

[Heidi · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book is not widely available in the United States and I had a difficult time finding reviews and a copy of the book. Many of the reviews I did read covered the like and dislike of the book. There is no obvious plot or resolution, which makes "in a fishbone church" such an enjoyable read. I was reminded of my own experiences with my grandparents' quirks, parents aging, and moving away just to get away. It almost seems like this would be a memoir written by someone with a fairly normal childhood and early adult life. At times the story line is frustrating with moving from one character to another. It starts focused on the grandfather, moving to the father and mother, then mostly to the daughters. Chidgey attempts to bring them all together in the end with the grandfather's diaries echoed as they were in the beginning, but she is not always successful. Upon completing the book I realize I enjoyed many parts, especially the rock, fishing and Berlin, but also see how some would not enjoy the book. I would recommend this book to those who want something different from some of the pop culture best sellers and heavy classics.

[Marie Greaney · Rating 4 out of 5]

Although initially disappointed with my finishing this book and feeling that “nothing had happened”, it’s stayed with me. We are left with a deeper understanding of why the characters are like they are, which is “something” and is perhaps the more important ending. Life doesn’t have a resolution, despite death, we are - and we leave behind for others - the threads of the lives that have gone before, inextricably interwoven with our own character, choices, flaws and decisions.
The diary entries of Clifford, who starts out being the central character but as the generations roll on, is a grandfather who left a stack of mostly forgettable diaries, are gold. They are so evocative of the self-centred husband and father who took his pulse every day, that they give a sharper picture than might otherwise be drawn. My favourite:
Mar 27 Fri
Up at 1a.m. this morning not for the fish but for Mum she had a terrible pain in her chest. I didn’t know what to think for a while but I’m all right again now.
Pulse 93

[Bachyboy · Rating 4 out of 5]

When Clifford Stilton dies, his son, Gene, inherits his carefully kept diaries which talk about his rock collections and his life. The book leaps back and forwards over the three generations; his wife Etta, their two daughters, Bridget and Christina. Strangely nothing much happens yet it is so well written and so satisfying to read. Her first novel.

[Veronica Huntington · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this book. It took me a short while to get used to the haphazard seeming style but it really worked and I just couldn't put it down. The characters felt so real and I was for invested in their story.

[Tom Croskery · Rating 4 out of 5]

Worthy winner of the Montana New Zealand First Fiction Award 1998.

[Isabella McLoughlin · Rating 2 out of 5]

Found it very hard to finish. Lots of unfinished story lines. Some of it was reminiscent of a typical NZ childhood

[Ian Gillies · Rating 3 out of 5]

Set in New Zealand in the later half of the 20th century, this story samples the experiences and perceptions of three generations in a middle-class South Island family transitioning from a small town, rustic setting to a more cosmopolitan time.

The atmosphere conjured up feels like a mirror reflecting the author’s own family experience. The early parts of the story draw heavily from the grandfather’s voluminous diary notes on his grocery store, hunting expeditions and hypochondria. The father’s early life, career and slow descent into decrepitude supply the framework for the latter two thirds of the tale. The mother, alienated from her own family of inflexible, hard core religious zealots, struggles to find her place. Interlaced throughout the story are the experiences of the two daughters, one adopted, one born late into the family, as they deal with parents, careers and each other.

It all feels real, if at times a little drab and even depressing. There is not much joy in this story, but neither are there shocking scenes to make me despair of human goodness or the possibility of finding happiness. The tale flows along as a depiction of possibly typical human lives in a certain time and place. But perhaps no life is truly typical, all are unique, and this may have been the point of the story. On reflection, I choose to see it that way.

Without doubt, the mood of a reader affects the appreciation of a book. I read this book when western Canada’s forests were burning; many days there were air quality warnings advising people not to venture outdoors or engage in vigorous activity. The normally bright blue sky was a milky white and the days were gloomy. Without over dramatizing my state of mind, I remember feeling that this was the “end days”. That darkness may have crept over into my experience of the book. I found it interesting as a study of a family, but it didn’t move me at the time.

[Sarah · Rating 3 out of 5]

hmm, my 2nd NZ book in a row, and also a bit turned upside down and playing with both time and perspective (as did "the rehearsal"). i was initially worried that there would be many whole chapters written in this rather dry, choppy old man's dairy entries, but turns out there was just the one. (was that a forgotten motif, or a mirror of how random life can be, with threads easily picked up and then abandoned?)
for a book preoccupied with death, it was surprisingly funny (relatively speaking). i liked the author's voice (is it too cliche to say that? no one's reading this anyway, right? good - just checking)

[Kat · Rating 1 out of 5]

Very odd. I did not finish it.

[Lisa · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have finished this book here on my very last day in Auckland and am going to have to leave it behind because of the weight of my suitcase, and unfortunately, I don't have the time to write the thoughtful review that it deserves.

In a Fishbone Church is Catherine Chidgey's debut novel, and it's so interesting to read it after falling in love with The Beat of the Pendulum last year. That was a book constructed out of fragments of daily life, and contrary to my own expectations, I was utterly captivated by it. Well, In a Fishbone Church—published 20 years beforehand—has some similar elements...

The reader learns about the characters from a diary, not the diary of an educated or especially literate man, just the daily notes of what is mostly a humdrum life, recorded by an Everyman who recognises that even an everyday life has significance of a sort. He's a butcher, and he goes hunting, and he buys presents for his wife, and he records his pulse rate because he's got a heart problem. He is not very interested in other people, and he finds it surprising when others, especially his family members, end up not doing exactly what he expected them to.

So much, so ordinary, and yet Chidgey has constructed from this material an absorbing tale of three generations interacting with this man and being influenced by him sometimes against their will. The book made quite a splash: longlisted for the Orange prize in 1999, and winning the Commonwealth Writers' Prize for Best First Book in South East Asia and Pacific (1999), the Betty Trask Award (1999), the Hubert Church Best First Book Award (1998), and the Adam Foundation Prize in Creative Writing (1997).

To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2019/05/19/i...

[Derek Macleod · Rating 4 out of 5]

As a ‘local native’ it is hard not to enjoy and appreciate this first novel by a blossoming NZ author. It is steeped in colloquialisms and cultural reference points that most New Zealanders can easily and fondly relate too. But it also carries more universal themes of distraught family relationships, generational differences and the experience and impact of hardship in life through the diary entries,for that wider audience. Yes, as some reviewers have noted, the story line does weave a merry course through the three generations and looses its way and impact in the final stages. But overall it resonated with me as a touchstone to so much of my own kiwi heritage and experiences which made it a memorable read.

[Karen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Some people have reviewed this book with critique on how little the 'diaries' influence the story, but I disagree. The main protagonist is not Clifford, the author of the diaries, but his son Gene and the relationships within his close family. Chidgey uses the diary entries in a very clever way to portray Clifford's personality (a hunter, rock collector and old school sexist) and how this influences Gene's life and thinking. As Gene ages and approaches his own death, his thoughts return to the diary entries as a way of him processing his life. Chidgey portrays an insightful look into death, the letting go and the effects that ripple onto family. I found it sensitive, realistic and endearing.

[Susan Wilson]

I just wish it had been more about Clifford and his “appointments” and neurotic health concerns. The diary entries were intriguing and left me wanting more. I found many of the other characters a bit dull…or perhaps it was just that we got snippets of lots of characters so I didn’t feel particularly connected to any. Having read after Axeman’s Carnival, did love that a magpie was slotted in there! Must also admit that being such a fan of Axeman and Pets, it might also be that my expectations were just way too high.

[Hope · Rating 4 out of 5]

took me a minute to get into, but i liked it! this is a novel about collections and collecting, i think that’s why it reads the way it does — a collection of moments arranged in almost thematic fashion rather than linear. something interesting in the names throughout: ‘clifford’ foreshadows his death, ‘gene’ couldn’t be more pointed about family and lineage, and ‘stilt’-on — here is rather a stilted family when it comes to communication (in that classic NZ way!). i’m sure there is more to unpack here. 3.5 from me but goodreads does love to oppress decimal fans.

[Charlotte Lobb · Rating 3 out of 5]

I've absolutely adored everything I've read by Catherine Chidgey, so I decided to go back to where it all began and read her debut. While it’s not my favourite of her works—and I have to admit I mostly skimmed the diary entries (sorry, Catherine!)—the ending genuinely choked me up. It’s a striking early example of the masterful writing we’ve all come to know and love. The novel carries so many layers and emotional depths that it lingers in your thoughts long after you’ve turned the final page.

[Becca Taylor · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was sobbing by the end of this book. It has sat on my shelf for many years, and I wish I'd picked it up much sooner now. It's a book about family primarily, and fathers, and passing.

I came to care deeply for the family in this novel, and I loved the vulnerability in each of them. I think the fact that I know the locations in the book so well, including Kaikoura and Sacred Heart College, gave the narrative an added layer of meaning for me.

Do read this book. It's very special.

[Dulcie D · Rating 3 out of 5]

Loving Chidgey’S NZ fiction but can identify with her more German works. Odd.
Had to go back and read this to see why I loved it previously. And I enjoyed it but did not love it. So will be a 3,5 for me.
I enjoyed the way Chidgey captures the different people but I can see and identify with with so many family and friend’s, and the relationships but it’s not dark NZ fiction if you know what I mean. Hard and harsh things happen but they aren’t hidden or dark.

[Gavan · Rating 3 out of 5]

A nice slow read. Beautifully written. Nothing happens very quickly & there is no strong narrative arc - a book to wallow in & think about family relationships, aging / dementia, the environment, 1950s attitudes, women's rights. Maybe just a little long, as I was starting to get a bit tired of some characters by the end.

[Sophia is Reading Today · Rating 3 out of 5]

I adore Catherine Chidgey so decided to read everything by her. This has been my least favourite so far but still read it to the end and love her powerful sentences. I don't read poetry but would give anything she wrote a go. If you haven't read The Wish Child, or other books, you are missing out.

[Vicki · Rating 4 out of 5]

Three generations from Clifford & Maggie to their son Gene; his wife , Etta & their two girls, Christina (adopted) & Bridget. Clifford was a serious amateur rock-hound travelling throughout Canterbury in search of fossils & semi-precious stones.
Gene was a keen trout fisherman & hunter.
The story zigzags back & forth between the generations & their day-to-dy lives.

[Azhar · Rating 3 out of 5]

meandering & ultimately ends without any sort of resolution. chidgey is a good writer but this clearly reads as her debut, it’s not as polished as her later works are. the parts dealing with the parents aging were probably my favourites, the most well written and the tenderness in those prose made me ache in empathy.

[Angela Campbell · Rating 4 out of 5]

The first novel (1998) by a talented NZ writer which shows the promise of her later work.
Relationships are finely observed and the story of three generations is tied together by the diaries of grandfather Clifford Stilton.

[Poppy H · Rating 3 out of 5]

There's a lot of bouncing around in this book and I will admit I skimmed over most of the diary entries as they added little to the story. This is a very character driven book with minimal plot, although the ending is masterful and heartbreaking.

[Karen · Rating 2 out of 5]

I found this book a bit disjointed, and it took me a while to realise it took place in New Zealand. I did not like Clifford the father, at all. I quite liked Gene, his son, and his family. There was too much hunting and fishing for my liking.

[Heather Williams · Rating 3 out of 5]

Maybe I should have read this Catherine Chidgey book first as it is her debut novel. However after reading most of her latest ones, including the magnificent Book of Guilt, I found this a bit of a let down. Not her greatest, but I forgive her because it’s her first. 3 stars ⭐️ ⭐️⭐️

[Asha Stark · Rating 3 out of 5]

I don't know how I feel about this. I enjoyed it, but disliked most of the characters. I think the formatting could have been better too.