Cows - Matthew Stokoe

★★
Genre: Extreme Fiction/Allegorical

Synopsis:  Mother's corpse in bits, dead dog on the roof, girlfriend in a coma, baby nailed to the wall, and a hundred tons of homicidal beef stampeding through the tube system. And Steven thought the slaughterhouse was bad...

Cows is the long-awaited reissue of Matthew Stokoe's critically acclaimed debut novel.



*** 

Review: 
I was on Reddit one day, and noticed a thread about dark/disturbing books. I like to test my limits sometimes with dark fiction, as generally a book needs to be quite a bit darker than average to bother me. I almost randomly chose Cows from the selection of titles suggested, and finished it in about 2 days. I have very mixed feelings on it. 

Firstly, it is gratuitously graphic in the extreme and the only concrete aspect of this book is detailed descriptions of shocking, disgusting acts of violence and abuse towards both humans and animals, while the purposes, intentions, and relevance of the acts remain implicit only, and fail to substantiate the characters and plot in any real way. For the first third of the book, the characters and story seemed so tenuously linked to the violence that I almost didn't continue. 

However, I will admit Stokoe CAN write - there are some amazing lines and passages that convey, for example, the desolation of the cows' situation in the slaughter house and that of Dog at home. And then, the story started to interest me. 

I still can't tell you what the point of the story is - there's something in there that reminded me of Ringing Bell, a Japanese shock anime about a lamb who, by seeking revenge against a wolf that killed his mother, turns into the very monster he tries to protect his kin from and becomes unrecognizable to them, leaving him a monstrous blend of wolf and sheep that fits in nowhere. 

There's something about power and devouring or being devoured by it, there's something about the corruption and self-destruction that comes from violence, maybe there's something about how violence only begets more violence until neither intent nor even species boundaries matter. 

I really don't know, I'm just not that smart. But I would love to read a (violence free) explanation of what he is attempting to represent here as I do feel there is SOMETHING of worth there. If Stokoe reversed his method, more clearly establishing characters and concepts, while implying the horrifying things that drive them, that I would find this to be a five star book. As it is, it's not worth the violence.

Rating: 2/5 

No comments: