Chicken
by Mike Batistick

"The men and women who populate contemporary relationship dramas tend to belong to a specific demographic, and when they quarrel, they do so on pale sofas and sea grass rugs. Their minds may be cluttered—with unruly dissatisfaction, with upper-middle-class regret—but their rooms have the air of 100 oxygen tanks. [The set of CHICKEN] inflicts a certain stifling anxiety right away…the set is a tiny, cramped apartment full of the mess of people who must worry about money. Mr. Batistick renders his metaphors in the thickest available chalk, but the story itself is as moving as the jump over the class divide is rare.” —The New York Times. CHICKEN follows the self-destructive Wendell as he tries to eat himself to death and save his family from poverty and humiliation at the same time. The trouble with Wendell's mission is that he has, in his own words, 'a big, weird family.' For example, Floyd isn't Wendell's brother, but he might as well be, given the way the two men fight, and the sacrifi"

— New York Post