It's a full house at The Piano on a wet Sunday when Catherine Chidgey and Kate Camp walk onto the stage. I have chosen to wear a blue velvet top so when Chidgey walks out in a long blue velvet coat I feel that I have made a good decision. The flames of my fan-girldom have already been fanned and she hasn't even sat down yet.
Camp and Chidgey have a long history with each other having both studied in the same writing course at Vic and later on Chidgey mentions that her friendship with Camp represents the entirety of her social life. They are friends and fans of each and so the rapport between them is comfortable and easy.
But comfort and ease are certainly not so easy to find in Chidgey's latest novel, The Book of Guilt. Chidgey describes the setting of the book, a story about 3 identical triplet brothers on the cusp of adolescence who are being raised in a Home in an alternative Britain of 1979. Chidgey reads from the opening of the book that describes their lives and environs, and that gives the reader, from the first pages, a sense that things are not quite right here. Camp, referring to these passages, points out something that I have also appreciated about Chidgey's writing - that it invites a close reading. It's filled with lyrical descriptions of the boys' home and daily routines but there are always little hints of foreshadowing, subtle choices that offer clues to the future and nature of the characters and their world.
When asked about this setting (a large home on the edges of the New Forest), Chidgey says that she "auditioned" a number of stately homes in the New Forest, taking a parquet floor from one, some blue velvet curtains from another, and combining them into a fictional "Franken-Home". The detail of the wall surrounding the home in the book, topped with broken glass was taken from a wall around a Victorian orchard. When prodded on this by Camp, Chidgey admits that sometimes she makes a note or takes a photo of something and might tuck them away for years before using them somewhere. This seems to satisfy Camp who says, "you're nothing if not obsessive so I would expect nothing less". (Is it a good idea for your friend to interview you at a literary festival? I feel like they're in a position to give away all your secrets.)
When describing how the idea for a book comes together Chidgey uses the metaphor of tiny iron filings being attracted to a magnet - "when enough of the filings are stuck to the magnet, I think there might be a story there". But in terms of the ideas and themes behind The Book of Guilt there is certainly an attempt at moral interrogation of using research undertaken by the Nazis, and of "Allied culpability". Guilt is not black or white. Many books have imagined an alternative history in which Germany won World War II but Chidgey "wanted to try something more nuanced than that" creating a history in which the war ended via a treaty, one that demands concessions on both sides.
When asked about the setting in 1979 and the way that recognisable pop culture is interspersed throughout, she says that she wanted to make the setting feel real so dropped in references to The Two Ronnies, or Richard Clayderman albums, for instance. Or, in what is surely some of the darkest humour I've read in recent years, a child in her book considers writing a letter asking for help with a very serious situation to a TV show. The show? Jim'll fix it. The host? JIMMY SAVILLE. In one fell swoop she's communicated something about the innocence of that time, as well as the awful secrets going on behind closed doors and of wilful ignorance. The way in which ordinary people allow, by their ability to look the other way, for horrors to occur.
This sense of questioning the morals of the characters is a theme that runs throughout the book. The triplets are tested via "Ethical hour" in which they're presented with unanswerable moral quandaries - a building is on fire, should you save the life of a child or save a painting that you could then sell for enough money to save 20 children from starvation? Chidgey took these questions straight from those asked of her at her Catholic high school. In the novel these questions are intended to prove in some way that the boys are "moral human beings", the great irony being that it's all the other people in the world of the book, the ordinary folk who've subscribed to a "some lives are worth less than others" philosophy, who should be questioned about their morals.
Camp points out that there's a lot of dramatic irony in the book. There are things that the main characters don't know but which are known by other characters. There are layers of deception, secrets, and misconceptions. Why is she drawn to these secrets and lies? Chidgey says that it's fun deciding what to reveal and when and what to withhold. It's quite complicated and takes careful planning, and you get the sense that she enjoys the challenge of pulling it off. Certainly my experience of reading the Book of Guilt was that this was masterfully done - being drip-fed little clues as the story went on in such a fashion that it was frustrating but not too frustrating. I think there's a real art to this and Chidgey is entitled to feel satisfied with the end result.
The book is structured in 3 sections; The Book of Dreams, The Book of Knowledge, and The Book of Guilt and represents the boys moving from a state of dreamy unknowing to then asking more questions about their world and finally to a state of understanding. The "sinisterly cheerful" cover image was discovered by Chidgey herself in the process of researching the setting of Margate and is from an actual vintage brochure for the seaside town and she was determined that it would feature on the cover. I don't think it's normal for authors to be able to dictate what the cover art of their novels will be but in this instance she got her way.
This prompts Camp to comment that Chidgey is "a manic researcher" and makes reference to her Cabinet of Curiosities talk in which she revealed "the notebook of a serial killer" where Chidgey kept all the details of her bids to buy 1930s mesh handbags, something that Camp says she has "a disturbing fetish for".
When asked about the age of the boys in The Book of Guilt, Chidgey admits that early adolescence is a period of life that she keeps returning to because it represents a looking back to the past of childhood but also looking forward towards adulthood, and a loss of innocence. In writing some of the interactions in the book Chidgey "loved revelling in the awkwardness of being a 13 year old".
With regards to the humour in her books, Chidgey says that she does read aloud "to hear where the beats are falling, and the musicality..." before going off on a tangent to mention that Jiffy, her cat, added their own humour at one point by treading on the keyboard and adding "lololol" to a really poignant scene.
Chidgey's journey to becoming a novelist wasn't necessarily direct. Although she had always written she never shared any of this writing until she was living in Berlin, figuring that "if I was going to fall on my face I wanted it to be on the other side of the world" but buoyed by the good feedback she had from her Berlin writing group she applied for the writing course back in Wellington, and of course was accepted. "You've always been weirdly humble for no reason - it's an ongoing thing" quipped Camp about her clearly very accomplished friend.
Why does she write so many books, Camp wonders? "What drives me, first of all, is fear of death". This line is delivered in such a matter-of-fact way, like she's answering a question about what brand of home printer she uses, that it elicits a laugh. I love an author who's happy to give a blunt and honest answer like that. Chidgey points out that she's 55 and "the clock is ticking" - there's only so much time and a lot of stories she wants to tell (yay!).
When it comes to deciding which story gets its turn next Chidgey goes back to the iron filing analogy adding that it's "the ones that won't leave me alone" that get her attention next. At which point she confirms that she's nearly finished her next novel, is in the planning stages of the one after, and knows that one that she wants to write after that. This gets a huge laugh from the audience as if none of us can quite believe her. The woman's a machine. "But I have no social life...", she adds.
The first audience question asks about the ponies in the book - is there a meaning behind them? Chidgey explains that there are wild ponies in the New Forest and she imagined that they would represent freedom but later learned that though they roam freely, they are actually owned and not wild at all. In the end this worked even better because "the boys think that they're free but actually that's an illusion".
Someone originally from Margate asks why that town in particular is used as a significant place in the book. Chidgey explained that like the stately homes she "auditioned" she also looked at a number of seaside towns and decided on Margate because of its amusement park, "Dreamland" as dreams are important in The Book of Guilt, and because of the amazing underground shell grotto. Nobody knows when it was made or by whom so there's an element of subterranean mystery about it.
Another audience member asks where and when Chidgey writes. Does she need a routine? The answer is very much so. She generally gets up at 6am and writes for a couple of hours before getting her 10 year old off to school and going to her teaching job, and will do some more writing or researching in the evening. She does this every day even though she says that 400 words a day, five days a week is the goal. What keeps her going is her fear of drying up one day. And if she should happen to write 500 words a day that doesn't mean she can slack off and do 300 words the next day "no, no, no". It resets back to zero. I find myself wondering if this is discipline or addiction but don't care as long as she keeps churning out novels that I want to read. Oh dear, I think my fandom might be toxic. OH WELL.
As a way to whet our collective appetites Chidgey lets us in on some details about her next book. During her Margate research she learned about a sideshow attraction of the 1930s called the starving bride. This involved women in bridal gowns being kept in a glass case for 30 or 40 days (something magician David Blaine did in the early 2000s). People would come to look at them to see how emaciated they'd become. As the parent of a 10 year old girl, Chidgey is more aware than ever of how body image and modern media can affect young girls, and that we're still obsessed with the emaciated female form. Her next novel will be told partially from the point of view of a starving bride on display in a near future Blackpool. The woman next to me exclaimed that it sounded "wonderful" to no one in particular and I'm inclined to agree with her - weird, dark, and full of potential. So Chidgey.
Read more
- Moata's review of The Book of Guilt
- WORD Christchurch website
- Follow WORD Christchurch on Instagram, Facebook and TikTok
- Our WORD Christchurch 2025 page - Find books by writers coming to this year's festival
- Photos taken during WORD Christchurch 2025
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