The stadium is packed to capacity, thousands and thousands of fans hooting and shouting in anticipation of the big match between those highly talented Danes from Copenhagen and the seasoned English champions, the Trafford Titans, who recently posted victories over Barcelona and Real Madrid.
The players are ready and there's the opening whistle. Non-stop action with blood aplenty. Just take a look at that automatic neck cutter gleaming its brutality. And catch a peak at midfielder Jo wielding his knife for the English. Score! Score! Score! The crowd goes wild. Wow! There's good reason why many avid fans are called Meatheads.
More scoring for the English and there's the final whistle. The refs tally the score of all the dead that are cleanly packed up and ready for shipment. And there you have it - the Titans post a decisive win over the Danes and they will be heading to the finals.
Hey, hold on, hold on, hold on. Neck cutters, knifes, packing up the dead. What the hell kind of sport is this?
Don't be fooled. What initially might sound like World Cup football, or what in the US is called soccer, is, in fact, Chicker, the up and coming European blood sport where two teams compete in slaughtering chickens.
Welcome to the world of Jay Spencer Green's Fowl Play. And let me tell you lasses and lads or perhaps you guessed from the above description of an international match from the pages of this raucous, most outrageous novel, we have some serious black humor going down here.
Firstly, there's the tale's narrator, Mr. Josiah Joshua Jordon King aka Jo playing a decisive role as a member of the Chicker line - the fact that it's difficult to distinguish between chicken slaughter in a poultry processing plant and chicken slaughter as a competitive game adds more than a pinch of satire.
Next up on the chopping block is Raoul who, in his indiscretion, committed suicide in the bleachers of the Trafford Titans stadium. Suicide, really? Did this knife-slashing Chicker do himself in or was he the victim of foul play? Damn, now the bloody police are questioning all the Chickers about his bloody corpse.
Thus the novel's framework. Permit me to highlight several more Fowl Play themes, topics and tropes by cutting to a brood of delectable direct quotes:
"I followed her to the desk, my head always slightly raised so that no one could see me checking out her arse. The wobble of her walk lent a slight undulation to each cheek as the relevant leg advanced, emphasizing what I like to call the "grabbage," the necessary couple of extra pounds on a woman's arse that you need in order to sink your fingers in and pull her onto you."
This woman is none other than D. I. Clarke, D. I. as in Detective Inspector. The ongoing cat-and-mouse game between Jo and D. I. Clarke is one of the more intriguing bits of the story. And, of course, never once does Jo miss a chance to catch a glimpse of the the detective's luscious grabbage.
"Stumpy Sue. The team mascot. You must have seen her. Short girl, no legs."
So Jo tells D. I. Clarke about the teenage orphan each team member will take turns caring for. Nowadays it's Jo's turn. As Jo points out later on: "Sue prefers to play Internet games or else do homework research. For all her cussing and indignation, she's secretly a responsible child." With Stumpy Sue we are treated to an added shot of both humor and pathos.
"So when wankers like Raoul tried to disrupt the smooth flow and functioning of the sport with their talk of unionization, of a global proletariat, of neoliberalism, and all that arse, they were effectively attacking European civilization itself."
Well, well, well. The plot thickens. As an anti-union informant and occasional hitman, Jo isn't about to let some dark-skinned Commie foreigner bring down the glorious game of Chicker - the epicenter of a shared worldview throughout all of Europe.
"It's only a shame that instead of getting Jack Nicklaus to redesign the course, they mistakenly asked Jack Nicholson."
Jay Spencer Green you sly dog, sprinkling in such gems. One can only imagine that golf course in Northwest England - surely an unexpected treat when a golfer lands in a "sand trap."
"We undressed one another slowly, teasingly, on the understanding that we would shower before any copulation."
Our main man shares a string of his souped up sexual encounters where he brings a chicken slicer's sensibility to the tender dimensions of intimacy with the fair sex; in other words, life reduced to little more than a slash-happy Chicker on the poultry production line.
Let's cut away yet again, this time to some overarching philosophical observations:
In many ways, mass production is one of the ugliest aspects of modern society, especially when it comes to things like poultry or beef processing plants. Most people would rather look the other way. If you don't believe me, go to YouTube and take a gander at a video or two on chicken slaughter. The one I viewed had the chickens hanging upside down to have their heads cut off by mechanical blades before being scalded in boiling water. Those less fortunate chickens that missed the blade drowned while being boiled alive.
There are novels dealing head-on with this repugnant subject (Upton Sinclair's 1904 novel The Jungle comes immediately to mind) but not many. In this way, Fowl Play adds a jolt of modern sensibility to the literature. True, generous helpings of satire and the blackest of humors are added to the mix but, hey, these elements are foundational to our brave new 21st century world.
Jay Spencer Green's father left school at age fourteen and worked his entire life in die-casting factories. And after university, Jay joined his dad at the factory. But five years was enough whereupon Jay left the factory never to return and used his savings to become a full-time writer. This to say, Jay had his own first-hand experience of the brutality and dehumanization of modern factory work. Fowl Play captures a measure of what it means to be subjected to such coarse debasement - a book that is occasionally tough going but a book well worth the read.
Jay Spencer Green - Here's looking at you!
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