I have to stop here or I will end up writing a novel - buy this book - follow the life of Steven and Lucy along with the herd of cows living under the city. To make matters worse Steven is also forced to deal with a talking, plotting Guernsey. The cow, part of a herd that has escaped the slaughter house and now lives in tunnels under the city streets, along with a herd of other cows, wants to convince Steven to help them stop Cripps by killing him.

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. That part is disgusting, yes. But that's just the beginning. It gets so much worse from then on. And then, Steven learns how to communicate with cows, for some reason. I guess, because they want him to kill their tormentor, Cripps. Because Cripps rapes them before and after killing them, at the factory. First, the good news. The story that Stokoe lays out in Cows is a road map of the development of a hypothetical sociopath murderer. The twisted tale follows the protagonist (if you can really call him that) from his abusive mother, through a metamorphosis of sorts (brought on by more abuse), and beyond. Stokoe’s writing is very good in that it will make the reader privy to the delusions and pressures within the character’s mind while almost making sense of the insane thought processes.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. Man : How would you know what I – Matthew Stokoe looks like? There’s no pictures of me – him – anywhere! Not on the internet, not anywhere!

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.)

Steven doesn't know it, but he can't fulfill his dreams of a normal life. He’ll meet a cow that will change his life. he won’t have a normal life, but he’ll be free to be who he, truly is. After reading what I have just written, you are probably wondering, what is so intense about this story. I won't tell you, because I think you have to read this book, knowing as little as possible. 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 is at risk of becoming a Discredited Trope as modern slaughterhouses are required by both their very nature and by law to be as ridiculously clean as possible. It's not unheard of for a person to walk outside a slaughterhouse and smell nothing but bleach and cleaning agents. As for their wastewater runoff, that's a different story.

Think whatever made it move is happy now in the fields of the hereafter? You believe in that kind of thing? Forget it. Meat doesn't have the brains.It just works till it dies or until someone cuts it up." 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.In the original The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974), Grandpa Sawyer used to work in a slaughterhouse, before changes in technology either made him obsolete or freaked him out too much to continue working (most of his family seems to be a bit high strung, possibly due to inbreeding). This drove his family into cannibalism. enormously disturbing and transcendently clever, Cows, a literally eviscerating portrait of life among the British lower classes, is revered internationally as one of the most daring English-language novels of the past few decades." Also, you know, kudos to the creativity put into some of the gore in this stuff. The author must really have dug deep into the darkest recesses of his mind to put some of this shit to paper. And to do it while at all times advancing a thrilling story at a good clip - chapeau. 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. Forget it....You can't kill without getting infected. It don't have the effect Cripps says, but it gets under your skin in other ways. We warned you."

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. Stokoe : Okay, okay – look – in Cows, cows are completely symbolic. I mean look, I have them talking – in Cows, cows can talk! Which as you know, in real life, they can’t. Look, there is a lot to try and get past in this book. Each person featured in here, and the Guernsey cow, are damaged and mentally destroyed. Stokoe has covered them in a layer of mud that won’t wash off and each character struggles to act ‘normally’ while battling this unseen poison that has infected them. The most obvious example of this is Steven’s love interest. She can feel this ‘thing’ festering under the surface, always growing and grabbing a hold on her insides and the depression it creates, where she understands that one day it’ll kill her, is horrifying to watch. Stokoe does a masterful job of showing various forms of mental health issues and how Steven, while suffering through his own issues, keeps trying to find hope and positivity. That one day, he’ll have a home that is filled with happiness and some aspect of his life will have meaning. 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. You know who she reminded me of while reading this book? If you are familiar with Pink Floyd's "The Wall".....and the song "Mother".....yup...that's her - without the maternal loving.....her words to Steven is to call him "cunt" and serve him raw sheep stomach while walking around with her menstrual stains.....yeah - gets pretty descriptive.

Current Discussions

The plot is, at least relative to the imagery, the sentiment, and the dialogue of the novel, unimportant. The main character Steven (anti-Hero...) is a young man in an unbearable living situation and we find him at the beginning of the book beginning a new job at a slaughterhouse. Like any young man in his position he has a love interest, wants a family and is conflicted about working in a place where killing is central. Cows acts as an amplifier taking all the difficult and awkward parts of a young man's life: the search for love, the desire for independence, the drive to rise up the rungs of society and amplifies them to the extreme. Where many may be familiar of the common experience of an overbearing mother who serves sub-par food Cows depicts Steven's mother (lovingly known only as "The Hagbeat") as a genuinely evil emotionally abusive semihuman who serves him food that is literally killing him. By amplifying Steven's situation Stokoe is able to demonstrate in great detail to an outsider the difficulties that a real person in Steven's situation faces. Similarly where some may feel that life is a series of small positive events in a sea of failures and mistakes Steven's life is often punctuated by brief moments of light that inevitably turn around and introduce more tragedy into his life than had been there previously. Initially the dialogue in Cows seems forced, almost laughable. Many conversations come off as clunky, affected, and most of the characters appear pretentious or insane. Upon returning from his first day of work, stinking and covered in slaughter byproducts Steven Runs into his disturbed love interest in the hall of their council house. A piece of meat falls from his hair and she asks: