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Critics' Opinion:
Readers' Opinion:
First Published:
Feb 2002, 256 pages
Paperback:
Feb 2003, 256 pages
The funny, touching story of a sweet, wide-eyed son of Seventies Suburbia who spends a year as a teenage sex worker servicing rich, lonely women in Beverly Hills. A gripping story that explores what it means to suffer through the underbelly of the American Dream. And make it out alive.
The funny, touching story of a sweet, wide-eyed son of Seventies Suburbia who spends a year as a teenage sex worker servicing rich, lonely women in Beverly Hills. After being raped his first night in Hollywood, David meets Sunny, the manager of Hollywood Fried Chicken, who teaches him all about chicken: how to fry one, and how to be one.
But the wild adventures and the mad money are never enough, as he's sucked into the seedy seamy underside of Hollywood: the blank-eyed women, the Fall-of-Rome orgies, and the drugs. With a mix of breathtaking honesty, sly comedy, genuine tenderness, and a wide-eyed fascination for the characters and bizarre world he enters, Sterry creates a narrative that is fresh, smart, and unexpectedly uplifting.
Chicken is a book like no other--a playful, gripping story that explores what it means to suffer through the underbelly of the American Dream. And make it out alive.
Chapter 1
The Tall Sexy Man & The Nun
'Children begin by loving their parents, after a time they judge them, rarely, if ever, do they forgive them.'
- Oscar Wilde
I wasn't molested as a child. No one beat me with a coathanger. I was never burned by my evil babysitter's cigarette. I grew up in neighborhoods where kids played ball, swang on swings, and rode merry-go-rounds. Santa slid down my chimney, the Easter Bunny hid chocolate eggs in my yard, and the Tooth Fairy left a quarter under my pillow.
A rosy patina of relentless suburban niceness shimmers on the surface of my childhood: roses swimming gently in beds, summery smelling freshly mown grass moaning, golden leaves falling like floating autumnal coins; the taste of cold waterymelon and the lick of a soft cloud of ice cream cone; toboggans and hot chocolate; Fourth of July fireworks and Tom Turkey Thanksgivings; Cream of Wheat mornings and Cat in the Hat nights.
You were happy where I grew up, and if ...
Alger Batts, filmmaker
I just wanted to tell you how incredible your book, it's like a Kerouac Chicken. I loved it so much, I HAD to read it in one sitting. I can't wait for the next book. Jerry Stahl, author of Permanent Midnight
Alternately sexy and terrifying, hysterical and weird, David Henry Sterry's Chicken is a hot walk on the wild side of Hollywood's fleshy underbelly. With lush prose and a flawless ear for the rhythms of the street, Sterry lays out a life lived on the edge in a coming-of-age classic that's colorful, riveting, and strangely beautiful. David Henry Sterry is the real thing. Larry Mantle, Air Talk, National Public Radio
Insightful and funny… great stories… captures Hollywood beautifully… Phillip Lopate, author of Portrait of My Body
Compulsively readable, visceral, and very funny. The author, a winningly honest companion, has taken us right into his head, moment-by-moment rarely has the mentality of sex been so scrupulously observed and reproduced on paper. Granted, he had some amazingly bizarre experiences to draw upon; but as V. S. Pritchett observed, in memoirs you get no pints for living, the art is all that counts--and David Henry Sterry clearly possesses the storyteller's art.
If you liked Chicken, try these:
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Published 2008
A powerful, deeply personal and often lyrical memoir of a woman learning to value herself as a person rather than a sex object, after years of sexual abuse by her father. Silverman's message is relevant to anyone suffering from addictions.
by Ryan Knighton
Published 2007
This irreverent, tragicomic, politically incorrect, astoundingly articulate memoir about going blind – and growing up.
The Flower Sisters
by Michelle Collins Anderson
From the new Fannie Flagg of the Ozarks, a richly-woven story of family, forgiveness, and reinvention.
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by Chanel Cleeton
As death stalks a gothic mansion in Miami, the lives of two women intertwine as the past and present collide.
The Funeral Cryer by Wenyan Lu
Debut novelist Wenyan Lu brings us this witty yet profound story about one woman's midlife reawakening in contemporary rural China.
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