The Beat of the Pendulum

Catherine Chidgey

A ‘found novel’

LONGLISTED: New Zealand Book Awards

Named one of the best books of 2017 by Radio New Zealand

From the author of the acclaimed The Wish Child comes something unexpected and fearless: a found novel. The Beat of the Pendulum is the result of one year in which Chidgey drew upon the language she encountered on a daily basis, such as news stories, radio broadcasts, emails, social media, street signs, TV, and many conversations.

As she filters and shapes the linguistic chaos of her recordings, different characters emerge – her family, including her young daughter, and her husband, mother and sister, her friends, and an extended family formed through surrogacy and donation.

In her chronicling of moments of loveliness, strangeness, comedy and poetry and sorrow, Chidgey plays with the nature of time and its passing. The Beat of the Pendulum is also an exploration of human memory – how we acquire it, and how we lose it.

This bravely experimental and immersive work draws us into the detail, reverberation and transience of a year in a life.

‘An important and deeply imaginative novel. Chidgey experiments with and opens up new structural territory for what contemporary fiction might be. Readers should be prepared to be challenged; equally, they should be prepared to be thrilled’ New Zealand Herald

‘An interesting literary exercise, not entirely relaxing, fascinating and interesting, but also one of those books that gives you an ‘in’ into a literary circle. Enormously pleasurable’ Radio New Zealand

‘Remarkable...The descriptions of her mother’s illness are handled with both grace and a sense of pre-emptive commemoration. The relationship between grandmother and grandchild, one fogging in memory, one coming into memory, is done with admirable and touching truth’ The Guardian

Paperback: 496pp

Published: Lightning Books (January 2019)

ISBN: 9781785630903