The Cows

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Lulubelle (a decisive cow): Okay, let’s take a vote. Everyone, moo if you want to trample Matthew Stokoe! 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. 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 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 often mechanical. Stokoe 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.

Unfortunately, I didn't see it. Perhaps I should have gone into it more blind. But I don't think it would have made any difference. First of all, I could not pinpoint any messages or themes in this novel that said anything that hadn't been said by 1997 less crudely and graphically but with more emotional impact. I felt like I was treading in familiar territory. Perhaps that is because I also have been a lifelong listener of some of the darker subgenres of industrial music, such as power electronics, which highlights sensory experiences otherwise abrasive and repellent and uses them in a way that somehow captures a bleak psychological concept or story, while also managing to capture the beauty behind the noise. 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 writing has a simplistic and serene style making me feel relaxed, enabling me to remain with it throughout the book.The writer describes it ‘warts and all’ which is so refreshing. Its lovely to witness the joy and the heartache as in real life.I had never heard of this author or book but got it from my library following recommendation by Easons.com When I was younger I was often asked why I didn’t have kids yet and told that I would change my mind. Thankfully, now I’m almost 40 years old, most people have accepted my mind is not going to change. I definitely used to feel the pressure that by not having children I was somehow wasting my womb and not performing my duty as a woman. Through Cam and her beliefs, this book reassured me that is not the case. My womb hasn’t gone to waste. Being born with a womb and the hormones that come with being female, is partly what makes me who I am. If I had been born a man, I would likely have been less emotional than I am, and I love being emotional. It makes me fall in love with the books I read, be enthusiastically affectionate towards animals, see and feel the beauty of nature around me. I love being a woman! I love being me! When one hears of a memoir about life on a traditional Irish farm, it conjures up images of a bygone era. However, The Cow Book is planted firmly in modern times and is an unflinching look at the realities of farming. It will be a revelation to many as the Irish farm has long ago lost its place in the forefront of national experience.

Reading the blurb for this novel, the first novel for adults by author Dawn O'Porter, I got very excited. It talks about the cow being a piece of meat, born to breed, one of the herd, and compares this to women, saying how they don't have to fall into a stereotype. I expected a slightly subversive novel about feminism. What I found was an easy to read, enjoyable romp through three modern women's lives. Two problems at the outset. Firstly, I didn't like any of the 3 women for various reasons (one implausibly irresponsible, one was so vain and arrogant, and the third behaved so ludicrously I couldn't take her seriously). Secondly, the act that the book centres on and that eventually brings all of the women together was totally ridiculous. A public act of masturbation. On a train. Commited by a woman in her 40s. A single mother. After a date where she gets merry but is sober enough to spurn his advances, knowing that she likes him and wants to take it slowly. But then all of a sudden not sober enough to be able to decide to wait 20 minutes until she gets home.It was strange to read that O’Porter wrote this after herself giving birth. I am in full agreement that a woman can be complete without progeny or indeed without a partner. I even agree with Cam that it does tend to be women who put each other into boxes rather than the men. What I was less comfortable with was the rather vicious way women who did not follow The Way Of Cam were depicted. Sophie is oppressed by her husband in exchange for his cash. Stella becomes a bonkers sperm-thief in her desperate scramble for motherhood. Mel is a bundle of varicose veins who urinates when she sneezes. There is little chance of missing the point here. 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.

Dawn O’ Porter wrote a great post on her own blog in 2012 on the nature of Trolling in which she states that:In 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.​