THE DARK SIDE of the American Dream has long been associated with Hollywood and Las Vegas. Writers have fallen over themselves to portray the evils gnawing away at America's soul, and these two books provide very different contemporary views.

David Henry Sterry's Chicken is the true account of his arrival in Hollywood as a wide-eyed seventeen-yearold 'tkeshmeat'. Getting away from his imploding family, he enrols in Immaculate Heart College. With nowhere to stay, he finds himself enticed back to a stranger's flat with the promise of food, before being