COWS

Product Information

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. This one will absolutely not be for everyone, but I see now why it’s gained such a long and warranted life in the dark fiction community. 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. Jones: This place is COVERED with blood! How are we supposed to figure out which is pork and which is woman?!

I'm not normally one to preface a review, or even mention in a review, when a book is not appropriate for certain audiences. (I hope to have duped a few of the weak-stomached into reading, say, Peter Sotos or Pan Pantziarka, because they deserve being read). But I'm going to start this one by saying, quite bluntly, Cows is not for everyone. In fact, Cows may not be for anyone. It is scatological, offensive, disgusting, filled to the brim with sex, violence, and sexual violence, and is probably capable of inciting nausea in those who are perfectly capable of sitting through atrocity footage and watch driving school videos for fun. Scene : A pleasant summer day in the English Peak District. A guy is walking through the breathtaking Derbyshire countryside. The pathway takes him through a field. In the field, a herd of cows. Matthew Stokoe's debut novel can best be summarized as follows. Take a healthy dollop of Horatio Alger (tempered with a dash of Alger Hiss), mix in a good dose of China Mieville's King Rat, a shot of Robert Bloch, add a couple of jiggers of Peter Sotos, ten drams of Camus, two shakes of David Mamet, bung in a couple of PETA ads of the most offensive variety, and then dump the whole mess into a shaker lined with Stewart Home. Shake, chill, and serve over ice cubes laced with LSD, rat poison, and Hideshi Hino films. One taste and you have scraped the tip of the iceberg that is Cows. Cowboy Bebop (2021): Our introduction to Vicious involves one of his minions being being marched through a storehouse with rows of giant tuna laid out on the floor. As the minion has messed up he nervously eyes the various hooks and other implements of the trade, but as it turns out Vicious uses a katana to off him.

COWS is a way of thinking about that. It is not a good novel by a number of standards. It’s awkwardly constructed; its inner monologues and dialogues are sometimes awkward and seldom persuasive; it doesn’t respond to the last fifty years of fiction except in glancing allusions to some other extremist authors; and its writing is dull and often mechanical. He doesn’t seem to have thought about the fragmented consciousness of Naked Lunch, or the ecstatic prejudices and violence of Céline. His rebellion is presented in the mold of simple fictional forms and basic narrative devices. Roxanne (unconvinced) : Well, maybe. But you know, all humans kind of look alike to me. It’s hard to tell the men from the women even. I think you’re talking to the wrong cow.

I’ll be totally honest with you. I might have given this book higher than three stars if not for the fear of what doing so might make people think of me.

Customer reviews

Her comment is practically unprovoked and one could imagine this scene playing out awkwardly in an uncomfortable amateur art film or an endless Godard monologue. It wasn't until well into the novel that I decided that Stokoe meant for much of the dialogue to be read more as a philosophical lesson than as actual conversation between two people. He places his characters in such unbearable situations that the only way to cope, the only way to process what they are going through is to do it out loud and in the most complex was possible. Viewed in this context the dialogue begins to work and adds a lot to the general feeling of the novel even if it is jarring to go from an extremely violent scene to a staid discussion of the transformative powers of violence. 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.) I was recommended this book and thought "What the Hell?" and then it was pointed out to me that it was in a genre called "Bizzaro Fiction"....so my nosey mind just had to look up what it meant and all the other books which fell into this. So picture me on a Friday at work...just adding book after book to my TBR shelf! I don't think Matthew Stokoe wanted to convey a particular message, or to be sensational. In my opinion he had an idea, then gave free rein to his imagination. This book is very brutal, gory, immoral, disturbing, disgusting, in short eviscerating. And more importantly, it’s very well written and coherent. I couldn’t put it down. On Steven's first day we meet Gummy (yeah....we find out why Gummy doesn't have lips or teeth) and Cripps - damn Cripps.....Cripps who has this insatiable sexual fatherly taste towards Steven and gives us soooo many words of wisdom. We also almost meet a strange pair of eyes hidden behind the grate by Steven's work station.