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Published 2000
A tale of murder mystery and Meccano Golden Deeds tells the story of the middle-aged Patrick Mercer, lying unconscious in a hospital bed: of the teenaged Laura Pearse's disappearance and the grieving of her bereft parents; and the story of Colette, a young woman seeking a new life in a strange city. In warm, compassionate and beautiful prose, Catherine Chidgey delineates the connections which, however fragile, bind people together across continents and generations.
'Magnanimous and merciless, a work reminiscent at times of darkest Atwood . . . A witty and melancholy alchemy of heat and chill, a work of craft and fluency, which revitalizes the book in all its guises . . . for those who love books, Catherine Chidgey is a find'—Times Literary Supplement
Catherine Chidgey is the author of In a Fishbone Church (1998), Golden Deeds (2000), The Transformation (2003), The Wish Child (2016), The Beat of the Pendulum (2017), and Remote Sympathy (2020). Some of her honours include Best First Book at the New Zealand Book Awards and at the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize (South East Asia and South Pacific), a Betty Trask Award (UK), the BNZ Katherine Mansfield Award, and a longlisting for the Orange Prize. Golden Deeds was chosen by Time Out magazine (London) as a book of the year, and was a 2002 Best Book in the LA Times Book Review and a 2002 Notable Book in the New York Times Book Review. In 2001 Catherine spent time in Menton, France as the Katherine Mansfield Fellow, and in 2002 she won the inaugural Prize in Modern Letters. She lives in Ngāruawāhia.
