Cows

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As each is confronted with the practical reality of another woman’s life they begin to learn the difference between taking an absolute position and accommodating one’s ambitions to suit one’s circumstances. As Cam observes, “Women’s rights are a delicate subject. There is one fight – feminism – but there are many different types of woman, and pleasing them all is impossible.”

I contract this with the way he views other women, notably the girl who lives above them, and the women he sees on TV. He idolizes them, not for their womanhood or personality, but for the life he feels they can give him. Steven wiles away his days watching his television and dreaming of the life he “should” have had, the life he desperately wants now, the life he’s willing to kill his mother for.I guess my biggest struggle with this book, and it appears to be the same thing for a lot of reviewers, is how Young talked so lovingly of these cows all the way through but in the end, she slaughtered them anyway. That feels bizarre to me. Factory farmers don’t care about the animals so there is no feeling there when they are killed. With Young, she talked about these cows as though they were pet dogs. You wouldn’t kill your pet dog! It just didn’t sit right with me and I can assure you it still wouldn’t have if I was still eating meat.

In the apartment upstairs Lucy spends her nights searching for the toxins she knows are collecting inside her body, desperate to rid herself of them. When she enlists Steven's help to manipulate a piece of invasive medical apparatus, he begins to see that a better life might indeed be possible. Lucy could be his partner, they could make a home together, they could have a baby. They could be just like the folks on TV.​ A purer version of COWS could be imagined, for example, in which nothing violent, immoral, psychotic, or perverse takes place, but the world is full of stench, slime, and opportunities for nausea. In that simpler version of COWS, it might be easier to see what kinds of narrative work would need to be done to bring the nauseating elements into dialogue with the rest of the book. I don't really have an idea how to perform such an analysis, partly because I can see how the ingredients work together to produce the book's effects, and partly because I can't enumerate the kinds of extreme subjects, acts, and descriptions. Are there more than three? Is visceral repulsion separable from moral repugnance? Is there a sexual perversity different from moral perversity? Why you should buy this: It’s interesting to me that the book I kept thinking of while reading ‘COWS’ was ‘Man’s Search for Meaning’ by Viktor Frankl. ‘COWS’ itself is just that, a young man who longs to break free from the chains that he’s been born into and find happiness and meaning, if only it is an idea of what it should be and should look like. Stokoe has crafted a story that does have significant depth and had me really thinking and it is an engaging piece of fiction, if you can get past that layer of filth and look for the treasure chest resting at the bottom of the sea. to avoid going into long physical descriptions of how cows greet, or scold, show distaste, etc, which would make the book much longer and far more scientific than the author intended. It's not a moralizing book or straight to the point, but it shows that farms need to make the effort to prioritise the well being of these animals. In return their productivity and life span will increase.

I’m vegetarian myself, but I don’t have an issue with others eating meat. I just think everyone should take a minute to think about what they’re consuming and make better choices. Try and buy locally and organic etc. This is something I thought this book might touch on a little, as the author herself owns a farm, but it was far more about what cows are like as animals, which was totally fine! Until she started anthropomorphising them to the extreme!

Christine (a bespectacled cow with a chic French look) : You know, I hate to say this, but he’s not entirely wrong. It’s pretty simplistic to see this guy’s novel either as a cry of protest against modern urban debovinisation or on the other hand as an Eating Animals Safran Foer- style polemic. In fact, it’s neither. Roxanne : I think we’re wandering from the point. This situation we have here is like Bret Easton Ellis finding himself alone in a room full of women in 1991 just after you know what was published. Roxanne: It’s going round all the herds. Some cow from Buxton sent it to me. Concentrate – it’s him – it’s that guy there. Roxanne : Yeah? And how would you know so much about an obscure avant-garde novelist as all that? Your bluster butters no parsnips with us, buddy boy. We have this! (Five cows simultaneously hold up the photocopied picture.)

The author has a farm where the animals are allowed to live more or less as they like until they go to the butcher. This last is referred to very briefly as in, Kite Farm is a beef farm. The rest of the time the animals are referred to in more or less the same way as people and as if they are going to live out their long lives until old age takes them. Perhaps this is true of the animals the author talks about, but what about the rest? Forget Bret Easton Ellis, Poppy Z Brite, and Dennis Cooper. That's kids stuff. If you want something truly repellent, try this." Hmmm where to begin. OK well let's begin with the five star rating system. If I allocated stars for books based on enjoyment and pleasure levels would this get five stars? No. Likewise if I allocated stars on how widely read I think a book ought to be, would this get five stars there? Definitely, a no. For sheer originality, uniqueness of vision, and bravura storytelling, and the fact that it has the impact of a freight train, this book most certainly gets five stars from me. The closest thing I’ve read to this would be Danger Slater’s ‘I Will Rot Without You.’ I’ve heard others mention Duncan Ralston’s ‘Woom,’ hell, even Duncan has said he’s not read the book but people say it’s similar to ‘Woom,’ but I didn’t fully make that connection. Maybe because ‘COWS’ read as more of a Bizarro book and ‘Woom’ reads as a horror story centering on a man’s lingering trauma. This was a very different kind of read for me and while I'm really happy I branched out and gave this one a go, I'm disappointed by the book in general. There were definitely some good takeaways from it but the whole thing overall left me feeling a bit strange and unsatisfied.