In a Fishbone Church

In A Fishbone Church is the expansive, deeply moving and multi-award-winning novel that launched Catherine Chidgey’s storytelling to the world.


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.

First published in 1998, 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 1990s,
these five vivid lives cohere in a deeply affecting and exhilarating
novel.

Format: Paperback
Pages: 304
Imprint: Te Herenga Waka University Press
Publication date: 05/12/2024