From the acclaimed author of Where Did You Sleep Last Night, an acidly funny, raw, and devastating love story of a decrepit, fallen film star and the young feminist filmmaker who revives his career.
Set in disparate parts of Los Angeles, Chicken uproariously, grievously, relates the collision and inevitably ruinous paths of two incendiary figures. One is the once beautiful and very famous Parnell Wilde, a maverick actor arrogant in his disastrous fall. The other is Annabel Wrath, a much younger, idiosyncratic cult filmmaker with contradictory motives for seeking the older man out.
The two are profoundly altered by their meeting and its harrowing denouement and manage to save each other from their paths of torment and dizzying spirals of decline. But when Parnell is offered the chance to perform in the sequel to Ultraviolence, the feature film that made him famous — and to work again with its brilliant but merciless director — he and Annabel are forced to wrestle with their fractured pasts as the extreme, fleeting, and dangerous world of fame threatens to divide them.
From the acclaimed author of Where Did You Sleep Last Night, an acidly funny, raw, and devastating love story of a decrepit, fallen film star and the young feminist filmmaker who revives his career.
Set in disparate parts of Los Angeles, Chicken uproariously, grievously, relates the collision and inevitably ruinous paths of two incendiary figures. One is the once beautiful and very famous Parnell Wilde, a maverick actor arrogant in his disastrous fall. The other is Annabel Wrath, a much younger, idiosyncratic cult filmmaker with contradictory motives for seeking the older man out.
The two are profoundly altered by their meeting and its harrowing denouement and manage to save each other from their paths of torment and dizzying spirals of decline. But when Parnell is offered the chance to perform in the sequel to Ultraviolence, the feature film that made him famous — and to work again with its brilliant but merciless director — he and Annabel are forced to wrestle with their fractured pasts as the extreme, fleeting, and dangerous world of fame threatens to divide them.
| Published By | House of Anansi Press Inc — May 22, 2018 |
| Specifications | 304 pages | 5.25 in x 8 in |
| Keywords | grunge; cult movies; love; revenge; power; chuck palahniuk; choke; hard core logo; tragicomic; satire; sex; black comedy; punk; vengeance; david lynch; joan didion; canlit; women writers; women's literature; creative writing; sex and rage; where did you sleep last night; gold fame citrus; martin john anakana schofield; |
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| Written By | Lynn Crosbie is a cultural critic, author, and poet. She teaches at the Ontario College of Art and Design and the University of Toronto. |
| Written By |
| Lynn Crosbie is a cultural critic, author, and poet. She teaches at the Ontario College of Art and Design and the University of Toronto. |
“Chicken, the new novel by Toronto author and poet Lynn Crosbie, is a clamorous, electrifying kaleidoscope of sex and violence that veers toward sensory overload. But just when you think you can’t take any more, there are moments of desperate tenderness and melancholy that almost make you weep. Oh, and it’s funny too.” —Toronto Star
“Crosbie’s prose is seductive and deft, and imbued with yearning . . . Chicken sounds a clarion call for the necessity and potential of transgressive literature — the kind that allows difficult, conflicting truths to exist simultaneously. Crosbie defiantly acknowledges both the deviant and the sacred, the romantics and rebels that exist in all of us.” —Quill and Quire
“A baroque masterpiece!” —Margaret Atwood
“Electric. With fearless instincts and incandescent language that cuts to the bone, Crosbie boldly explores the savageries of Hollywood, love, and fame, as well as the scars they leave behind. Parnell Wilde is surely among Crosbie’s most vivid and heartbreaking creations.” —Mona Awad
“As it follows the desperate last twitchings of an aging bad boy actor, Lynn Crosbie’s latest novel draws us into a nightmarish vortex that feels like an unholy wedding of David Lynch and Joan Didion. Elegantly sleazy, sensuously creepy, and funny as hell, Chicken is one of the best Hollywood novels I've read in years.” —Dan Chaon