Praise for Fowl Eulogies
"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
“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
“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
“This story about marketing advances with precision, without digression, and avoids the traps of anthropomorphism and terror.” ―Libération
“A dystopia for farm chickens, Lucie Rico’s first novel is initially charming, then haunting, then threatening.” ―En attendant Nadeau
“A comedy laid with masterful ease, absurd and delicious.” ―Causette
“Without long sentences or big words, Lucie Rico puts some humor and much freshness into this astonishing story, with a natural levity that defuses the cruelty and darkness of the events.” ―La semaine du Roussillon
“Fowl Eulogies, Lucie Rico’s first novel, is a farce … of sorts: the author’s prose is very neutral and one is continuously shuttled back and forth between the certainty that the story is a fable, and the sense that one is reading about the gradual slide into insanity of a heroine who is becoming increasingly frightening. But who cares about a book’s classification when it is so accomplished. Lucie Rico constructs a masterful plot, with twists as unexpected as they are deliberate. This is surely the reason why she manages to carry us along in this comical tale: if there is a slide into a parallel world, it is gradual, near-invisible.” ―L’usine nouvelle
“A profound meditation on our supposedly human(e) race, without flattery but with tenderness.” ―Esprit
“Never before were chickens so scrupulously observed. It turns out that Lucie Rico is a documentarian, and I guarantee you that this is as applicable to her pen as it is to her eyes.” ―Livres agités
2023-02-25
In this first novel from French author Rico, a woman’s life and desires swerve wildly after she inherits her mother’s chicken farm.
When her mother dies, 36-year-old Paule Rojas leaves the city and returns to the farm where she was raised. She has inherited 350 chickens. Her mother used to run things, handling the killing and sales. Paule, who became vegetarian after her mom killed her favorite chicken, realizes her memories of her mother “are all connected to violence and death.” She kills her mother’s favorite chicken—her mother’s last wish—and sells it at the local market, labeled with a beautiful eulogy she wrote herself. It sells. Paule grows fond of life at the farm, to her husband’s dismay back in the city. Immersed again in a playful, idyllic life with chickens, she writes of them then kills them to honor their spirits. The eulogies are closely observed, tender, and funny, like much of the novel, but the killing is also a deep part of Paule’s routine. The second act hinges on a supermarket owner who sees big sales potential in the eulogies. And after the locals get violent and someone attacks Paule’s farm, she flees to go into business with the supermarket owner. Back in the city, she reunites with her husband. Conveniently, he’s an architect and designs the urban farm for the new venture, Paule’s Poultry. They hire writers to mass-produce eulogies for the “urban chicken.” They scale up the business. Sales soar. Her husband embraces this odd, magical life with Paule’s chickens everywhere, but it’s all happened too easily, and Paula discovers multiple betrayals. Rico ends the book with a bang and a four-word eulogy from Paule describing her life’s purpose: “To write. To kill.”
A quirky, moving novel propelled by love, grief, and violence.
