One of our recommended books is Fowl Eulogies by Lucie Rico

FOWL EULOGIES

Lucie Rico & Daria Chernysheva (Translator)

A surreal novel about the all-consuming desire to render homage to a life

Upon her mother’s death, Paule Rojas, a vegetarian city-dweller, returns to the chicken farm where she grew up. Pressured to fulfil her mother’s last request, Paule rediscovers pleasure and meaning in running the old family business. Yet, eager to bring something of herself to a family tradition, Paule embarks on increasingly intricate ways of helping the chickens to self-actualize before their deaths. She records the chickens’ life stories, adding them to the labels that decorate the vacuum-packed meat sent off to market—an individual biography for every chicken.

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A surreal novel about the all-consuming desire to render homage to a life

Upon her mother’s death, Paule Rojas, a vegetarian city-dweller, returns to the chicken farm where she grew up. Pressured to fulfil her mother’s last request, Paule rediscovers pleasure and meaning in running the old family business. Yet, eager to bring something of herself to a family tradition, Paule embarks on increasingly intricate ways of helping the chickens to self-actualize before their deaths. She records the chickens’ life stories, adding them to the labels that decorate the vacuum-packed meat sent off to market—an individual biography for every chicken. But not all runs smooth in her childhood village; Paule finds she has few friends and many enemies. She is forced to spread her wings, relocate her livestock, and oversee the construction of an urban farm of never-before-seen practices and proportions.

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  • World Editions
  • Paperback
  • May 2023
  • 240 Pages
  • 9781642861310

Buy the Book

$17.99

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About Lucie Rico & Daria Chernysheva (Translator)

Lucie Rico is the author of Fowl EulogiesLucie Rico is an author, screenwriter, and director hailing from Perpignan in the South of France, and currently based in Paris. She worked for several years in publishing and online media before devoting herself to writing for the page and the screen. She has directed various series and short films and written feature films. In addition, she is an associate professor in creative writing at the University of Clermont Auvergne. Fowl Eulogies, awarded both the Ecology Prize and the Cheval Blanc Literary Award, is her first novel.

 

 

 

Daria Chernysheva translates from Russian and French. She completed her MA in Translation Studies at the University of Warwick on a Fulbright Scholarship, and is currently a doctoral candidate in Creative Critical Writing at University College London. She was a recipient of the 2019 French Voices Award for excellence in translation. Her work has appeared in the Brooklyn Rail, Triple Canopy, AzonaL, Comparative Drama, and Tether’s End.

Praise

“The book is extraordinary! It’s a love fable. Disturbing, compelling, and heartbreaking, and—like some great magic trick—utterly convincing. I’ve more to say, about the warnings in the story, the soft horror of homogeny, about how things—endeavour, care, a species—mutate when taken from their natural place … but the story itself says it all much better. It’s brilliant.” —CYNAN JONES, author of The Dig

“In this first novel from French author Rico, a woman’s life and desires swerve wildly after she inherits her mother’s chicken farm. A quirky, moving novel propelled by love, grief, and violence.” —Kirkus Reviews

“This story is perfectly wacky, and both brutally and incomparably funny. Fowl Eulogies is a debut novel that keeps getting crazier, reaching its climax in blood and punitive action. Lucie Rico has managed to write a book in which bursts of laughter give way to disquietude and teeth-grinding, like a squawk right before the killing blow.” —Télérama

“This modern tale, a dazzling first novel of malice and feathers, hatches the unique poetry of the industrial chicken, innocent symbol of our anodyne lives, our shrink-wrapped lives—and you will never taste it again without sparing it a sincere thought.” —Elle

“Written in an incisive style of short sentences, as if chopped by a meat cleaver.” —L’indépendant

“A comedy laid with masterful ease, absurd and delicious.” —Causette

Discussion Questions

1. How would you describe Paule’s relationship to the chickens? Is there something maternal in it? What does it provide for her that her human relationships do not?

2. The book is full of Paule’s relationships and the various faults/needs they contain. Think about her relationship with her (ex-)mother, with her partner Louis, with Nicholas from the village, with her eventual business partner Fernand. What do you think the combination of these suggests about Paule herself?

3. What do you feel is the significance of Louis’s hands? What does Louis mean to her?

4. What do you think about Louis’s character? About his own chicken-relationship with Aval? Is he doing this for himself or for Paule?

5. Do you think Paule gains in strength over the course of the novel? Does her relationship with Louis alter?

6. Why do you think Paule likes to kill her favorite chickens? Why do you think her mother killed Paule’s favorite chickens? What is being said about relationships here?

7. Paule finds a kind of outlet in writing. What do you think this provides her? What do you think it means that this outlet then gets out of Paule’s control and turns into something she maybe wished it had not?

8. What kind of role does grieving play in the novel? What are each of the characters’ coping mechanisms for loss?

9. What do you think about Paule’s level of strength by the end of the novel? How would you interpret this ending?

10. What do you think Rico is trying to say about our consumer habits? About our relationship to the food we eat? About the stories we tell ourselves to make our behaviors acceptable?

11. Have you read any other books like this one? What feelings were you left with after reading? Would you be interested in reading further books by Lucie Rico?

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