Dirty Chick: Adventures of an Unlikely Farmer
Written and Narrated By: Antonia Murphy
Length: 7 hrs and 20 mins
7 hrs and 20 mins in the head of a really funny woman—oh, to look at the world that way!
I gotta admit, I’d never even heeeeeeeard of Dirty Chick by Antonia Murphy, but it was suggested by an, ahem, nice person who likes a good animal pick every now and then (Yes, YOU! I’m talking to YOU!). Did YOU know that many, many, MANY animals meet their demise after run-ins with Murphy, her husband, her two kids, and all their whacked out and wacky neighbors?
I would’ve been traumatized, I tell you, had it not all been so funny. Antonia Murphy just has a really twisted way of looking at the world and is MOST unabashed about it. She even makes her son’s disabilities (which cause him LOTS of problems) almost sweet (she calls him a little alien because really: Who on EARTH thinks as her son does? He’s one-of-a-kind).
I kept texting my sister as I was listening to it with Animal Updates: Executed chickens; Turkeys bleeding out after their throats were slit; Animals being impaled through and through and roasted on a spit; and hear her out: Antonia thinks it’d be really great if they could make their own sausage. Okay, so, like, I’m a vegetarian and I SHOULD have been horrified (don’t worry—I’m no Meat Nazi, you do what you wanna do and don’t mind me, yes?), and I SHOULD have been running in terror, but actually, No. There are a LOT of really funny animals in the book too. I loved their little goat family, even if Moxie and Stripe did love to climb on top of cars and slide down the windshields. And it’s hilarious that she KNOWS she’s an addict. She wants MOOOOOORE animals, yes please, we can do that, what’s one, two, a freakin’ DOZEN more gonna do; it’s all fine.
But Dirty Chick is about more than the animals (tho’ you KNOW that’s where my mind goes first, right?). It’s about her family’s first year of life in New Zealand, communing with nature, learning to be neighborly, coping with health crises in a country where medical care is guaranteeeeeeeed; it’s just not always that great.
What makes it a good book, though, is that her writing style, her narration of her own words, bring that twisted mind out. The woman is quite handy with the ribald metaphor, and I’ve never heard more devastating similes in my life.
So despite the occasional bump in the road caused by chickens whose legs are being eaten off by mites? Well, thank YOU for your suggestion. Although, I must admit—listening made me wonder why I’M not somewhere getting loaded on homemade wine, why I’M not somewhere whiling out my days whilst my goat is gang-raped.
Seriously. After listening to Dirty Chick, ya start to wonder about things like that…
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