Cows

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The word is out that Cows is every bit as dark and deranged as Iain Banks' classic The Wasp Factory. It's not: it's even more so. Possibly the most visceral novel ever written."

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!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? Simone (svelte, but nobody’s fool) : You got to be joking, pal. In our world you’re famous. Can’t write a book like Cows and not get noticed by us actual cows. We’re not cultural ignoramuses like sheep – they just watch daytime TV. But we like our Andy Warhol wallpaper and we appreciate the cover art on Pink Floyd’s under-appreciated Atom heart Mother album. Although side two is very self-indulgent, it’s true. I have a vinyl copy. 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.

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? I had to think, before writing my review. I understand why there is controversy surrounding this book. This book touched me so much, that it took me a while, to put my ideas into place. I loved it! Few are the gross-out books and movies that properly utilise gore in service of the story. This book is a shining example of how to do it. The wretched set-up is necessary to prime our suspension of disbelief for what is yet to come. Every horrible incident that follows thereafter is a stepping stone on Stephen’s path towards becoming cow Hitler (I don’t know what else to call it). Once he is the one committing the atrocities instead of having them done to him, the gruesome scenes acquire a new timbre; they are stepping stones no more, but milestones in his evolution. It’s interesting how your TBR can conspire against you to bring similarly themed/content books together. Recently I read ‘Tender is the Flesh’ by Agustina Bazterrica. This was followed by the ‘Twisted Anatomy’ anthology through Sci-Fi and Scary. Meanwhile, I was also diving into ‘COWS’ by Matthew Stokoe. All three featured similar moments of wretched repulsiveness, while all three had great depths of philosophical ideas buried beneath the grotesque content. Dawn O’Porter: the accessibility of her writing style will cement The Cows’ popularity. Photograph: Jenny SharifIn 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.​ I am one of the few. The very few. The absolute select few. I read Matthew Stokoe’s novel Cows and finished it. I am one of the even fewer, the fewest of the few, the almost singular, in that I believe that even though the words written are more disgusting than few authors dare to go, each scene they construct is intended as a cultural reflection.

The book, though enjoyable in its way, was not what I think of as a good book. I thought too much of the 'secret life' was fanciful and not at all credible. And I speak from a point of view of knowledge. I know cows as cows who are not subject to people at all, I've been observing 'wild' ones for decades, mostly in my garden where they eat what they fancy every now and again. (They like psychedelic magic mushrooms but I've not seen if they get high or not on them). Cows are not farmed in farms here, the farmer lets the gardens of the whole island feed them and they just cull the baby bulls, the cows are free to live out their lives until old age weakens them, then they too go to the abbatoir. While I could write a full academic paper on how I view Cows as a critique on current social structure, not all would agree with me.Author Rosamund Young runs Kite's Nest Farm, on the edge of the Cotswolds, with her brother and partner. She has lived on the farm since her childhood, and has been observing the animals ever since. Her ethos is admirable; they let the cows decide when they wish to finish weaning, allow them to live in mixed generational groups to give the younger members the opportunity to learn from their elders, and give the animals constant access to food and water. Young writes: 'We decided that the animals themselves are by far the most qualified individuals to make decisions about their own welfare and it is the decisions they make, as well as many other occurrences both humdrum and extraordinary, that I have observed, learned from and written down here.' Young then goes on to elaborate further, explaining that she and her colleagues 'have tried on this farm to create an environment that allows all of the animals the freedom to communicate with or dissociate themselves from us as they choose.' Throughout, she makes highly thoughtful points; for instance: 'Just because we are not clever enough to notice the differences between individual spiders or butterflies, yellowhammers or cows is not a reason for presuming that there are none.' I’m perfectly happy accepting that cows communicate with each other, of course they do, like all animals do! However, I found it a bit off-putting when Young would say something about cows “consulting” or “discussing the weather”. The whole thing left a bit of a weird taste in my mouth.