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Nick
Earls. World of Chickens. Penguin 2001.
RRP $28.00. |
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Nick
Earls is a popular, unashamedly Brisbane author, whose
zesty, humorous novels - especially 1996's Zigzag Street
- reinforce that there is much to write and smile about
life in the Queensland capital. In his latest book, World
of Chickens, Earls again feasts on the city's riches,
this time a 1980s Brisbane redolent with its dodgy night
life, Joh protests and AM radio travesties. Earls also
reprises the characters Philby Harris and Frank Green,
the medical student odd couple whose comic misadventures
were such a richly entertaining highlight of his 1999
short story collection, Headgames. |
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In
WoC, Philby and Frank find themselves fitting their
studies around shifts at the fast food outlet of the book's
title, a distinctly down-market operation run by Ron Todd,
an eccentric suburban entrepreneur of the ilk of Neighbours'
Lou Carpenter. Philby, who is "sick of being the nice
guy of the zodiac" (p.80) and of watching the world go
by from the inside of Ron's chicken suit, dreams of making
things - making something of his life, making films and,
most of all, making it with women, especially Ron's daughter
Sophie. While Philby wrestles with his desires, Frank
provides the comic relief, swallowing chicken burgers
whole, inventing a Staminade-based cocktail called the
Brizgarita and complicating Philby's life whenever possible,
no more so than when he gets it on with Ron's wife (and
Sophie's mother), the jewellery-laden and somewhat reptilian
Zel Todd. |
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Plucked
of its feathers, WoC is an exploration of dissatisfaction
and the tempting, but ultimately unfulfilling, allure
of being someone else. In Philby's case, the reinvention
takes numerous forms - as a woefully inept ladies man,
as the imaginary hero of a second person novel and, most
vividly, as a giant chicken, where, ironically, he is
at his bravest with Sophie. The motif of new beginnings
is reinforced throughout the story by Ron's attempts to
revive his ailing business and marriage, and more allegorically,
by Philby and Frank's work at the Antenatal Clinic at
the Mater Mothers Hospital. |
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