John Connell’s book begins in the middle of the night during one of the wettest winters on record. He is delivering a calf by himself for the first time: “There is blood on my arms and face, but it is a pleasing blood, the blood of life.” It’s a moment of responsibility when Connell needs to prove to himself and his father that he is capable of managing the farm his family has owned for 30 years. The delivery is successful – “he is a fine wee bull” – and Connell passes the test: “Manhood is an important thing in this land. Farming gives us our sense of it, our understanding of ourselves.” 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 read this in one sitting and boy was it a wild freakin ride. Yes I gagged and screamed too many times to count, but it's a horror that made me feel something so that's all I ask for. When you separate the gross parts from the underlying story, it's truly a good narrative about the repercussions of abuse and channeling anger to unhealthy outlets, to say the least. Definitely look up trigger warnings and definitely don't eat until you're at least aware of what's going on in this book lol. 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. One of the darkest and probably the most disgusting thing I have read, but I could not put it down.

Daisy (a left-leaning cow) : I believe it neatly encapsulates the human male infantile mindset, the fear and loathing of the mother, the horror of the female power of birth, of creation if you will, and the homo-erotic desire to be a man amongst men and to take charge of your manly destiny, all of which it appears has to be achieved by killing the mother figures. It’s all too lamely Freudian for me. Moo! Moo! I say trample him on aesthetic grounds, not on moral grounds. The bad news is that so much of the understanding of the character comes from the sheer, incredible nastiness of the narrative. During the course of this relatively short novel the main character (Steven) is involved with (whether as a player or a spectator) bestiality, coprophagia, rape, murder, and mutilation of such grand and graphic extremes that I cannot recommend this book to anyone. I don’t want to be responsible for anyone diving into this one. 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. Det er en fin lille bog, og der er mange gode fortællinger, men jeg nåede også til at punkt, hvor jeg var lidt mættet i de mange historier fra Kite’s Nest. Jeg savnede mere videnskabelig opbakning og konkrete fakta, men jeg anerkender samtidig også, at det netop er narrativet, der gør den lille bog til noget ganske særligt. Den er både vedkommende og tankevækkende og introduktionen burde være pligtlæsning for enhver. I’ve heard quite a few readers say this is the most extreme book they’ve ever read. I was even warned not to read it because it was so over the top disgusting. So of course I had to read it.

I so enjoyed (and learned so much from) this enchanting and informative look at the secret lives of cows, pigs, hens and sheep. Young is a good storyteller and educator as well. 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. It’s the story of a young man, Steven, who doesn’t know what love is. His mother hates him and tortures him since birth. He dreams of a life like the one he sees on television, but doesn't know how to get it. All the atrocities he endures and all the ones he has done, are aimed at a normal life. Steven wants a wife and a child.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. One of the problems is in the feedlots, the cow is part of a production chain that ends up as a burger. The problem is that too many of us want to eat them too often and the planet cannot sustain that. I’m going to do my best to stay spoiler free, but I wanted to just say – this is a book that if you need any sort of trigger warning, you’ll not make it very far into it. Have you watched 2 Girls 1 Cup? What was your response? If it was anything other than ‘what is the art behind this’ you’ll be best to pass. Things that occur – animal abuse and torture, self mutilation, matricide, infanticide, beastiality, scat play and ingestion and homicide just to name a few. But the political posturing does not come at the expense of humour, which is illustrated in the bovine metaphor that Cam uses when talking about women, individuality and the cultural imperative to procreate. It is such a strong idea that O’Porter uses it for the title of her book, and it neatly sums up her light feminist message: cows needn’t follow the herd. Sara Keating 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.

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?Reading 'Cows' is like running some kind of marathon. Chances are, the most disturbing novel you've ever read is Disney-lite compared to this one. I'd suggest reading it over two or three days like I did. Despite its relatively minor length, reading it in one sitting might have you not leaving your shower for the rest of the day, and spreading it out over a week is kind of like staring at the sun. Do it for too long and you're bound to cause some permanent damage. Like that certain cows - although some are very intelligent themselves - realise early that humans are smarter than they are and will often conclude that people are omniscient! Some will come and ask humans for help with things they know they can't do themselves; others will just assume the humans know what's wrong and will put things to rights eventually. 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. I think it’s interesting that you’re not suggesting we stop eating them—just that we need to radically rethink how we treat them. For me, I wasn’t a big fan of the Cripps character. While he was important for Steven’s development and self discovery, I found his character to be too-over the top for the rest of the story.

I thought the cow’s story needed retelling, because we got into a position where we were accepting that the cow is almost an unmitigated evil in terms of health, biodiversity, and emissions. It’s like we’ve forgotten our manners. So, the book opens with Steven starting his first day at work, yup, you guessed it...he is working at the SLAUGHTERHOUSE!! Ahhhh....hah....."Send in the COWS" (clowns? cows?) Apparently there is nothing like abject humiliation to ensure that we see the best and worst of women. Indeed, as Cam is vilified by a fellow feminist on radio, O’Porter reveals the central thread that ties the book together. “The irony is that it is you boxing women into these roles, not men,” Cam tells her female host. Women’s greatest enemy, it seems, is not the patriarchy. It is each other. In fact, I think many readers, whether familiar with things like power electronics or not, were trying to make a similar association with this book, transcending aesthetics. And in some ways, I get it. Certainly this book, with its nonstop brutality and descriptions of repulsive sensory experiences, attempts to desensitize the reader much as the main character in this story becomes desensitized and becomes a serial killer. 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."Forget Bret Easton Ellis, Poppy Z Brite, and Dennis Cooper. That's kids stuff. If you want something truly repellent, try this."