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Cows

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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. Charming and absolutely random stories about animals on an English farm. The narrator obviously loves all her animals and has made some fascinating observations, which made me want to visit her farm. Nevertheless, the book would have profited from even a little editorial attention. As it is now, the book is all over the place, pays in depth attention to details that aren't really essential and glosses over the more interesting bits, while having no structure at all. Another way to put this would be to say that COWS makes a rum mixture of a large number of important provocations: morality, ethics, sexuality, perversity, nihilism, sadism… nearly every concept I have mentioned in this review, including beauty and harmony, is contested. But that observation is just another form of the puzzle I mentioned at the beginning: why, if a book manages to combine all these, is it not more or less automatically an important book? 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 Rosamund Young is a farmer who runs Kite's Nest Farm in the Cotswolds. She writes of her observations of cows and how they are intelligent animals with personalities as diverse as our own. She shares anecdotes about her interactions with her animals and their behaviours.

This is a book about farming. About a family trying to make a living. And even though – as many, many people have repeatedly mentioned here – they accomplish this by “raising cattle just to slaughter them”, they manage to treat the animals with utmost respect. Yes, the cows and calves get slaughtered when their time comes. But that doesn’t influence the fact that, while they were alive, every single person on this farm gave their everything to make the lives of these animals as comfortable as possible.Please be aware that this article contains triggering subject matter. While key plot points have been omitted, severely disturbing material is alluded to. Connell’s memoir also charts our long relationship with cattle, our companions for some 10,000 years: “To speak of cattle is to speak of man.” But the strength and originality of this book clearly lies in Connell’s searingly honest account of rebuilding his life. Returning to the land of his birth plays a big role in that: “In this farm, I have found my Walden, my sustenance. I walk its fields and know I am alive.” But his irascible father doesn’t understand and in a fiery argument he calls his son “a failure” and tells him “I don’t need you”. This brutal scene spurs Connell to write not the novel he intended, but this age-old story of father and son, struggling with nature and with feelings buried too deep for words. As Connell says, they are like “two bulls in the field sizing each other up”. Hmmm where to begin. OK well let's begin with the five star rating system. If I allocated stars for books based on enjoyment and pleasure levels would this get five stars? No. Likewise if I allocated stars on how widely read I think a book ought to be, would this get five stars there? Definitely, a no. For sheer originality, uniqueness of vision, and bravura storytelling, and the fact that it has the impact of a freight train, this book most certainly gets five stars from me.

I guess my biggest struggle with this book, and it appears to be the same thing for a lot of reviewers, is how Young talked so lovingly of these cows all the way through but in the end, she slaughtered them anyway. That feels bizarre to me. Factory farmers don’t care about the animals so there is no feeling there when they are killed. With Young, she talked about these cows as though they were pet dogs. You wouldn’t kill your pet dog! It just didn’t sit right with me and I can assure you it still wouldn’t have if I was still eating meat. 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.” 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. 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. 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!I had to think, before writing my review. I understand why there is controversy surrounding this book. This book touched me so much, that it took me a while, to put my ideas into place. I loved it! The Secret Life of Cows is a mixture of musings about ethical farming, things which the owners of Kite's Nest have implemented to better the welfare of their animals, and anecdotes about particular animals. Some of these are amusing, and others quite sweet. For instance, we meet Meg, a calf who learns to climb some very steep steps so that she can spend the night in the granary, 'away from mud and draughts and bullying'. Meg then teaches two of her fellow calves how to climb the stairs too. There is Alice, who is fond of hide and seek. Young writes: 'She would do her best to hide behind a walnut tree but of course she was too big and as soon as she realised I had seen her she would gallop off again and hide behind the next one, and so on until we reached the cow pen.'

Alas despite the decent treatment and freedom these creatures get, they still end up being butchered. 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. 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.) Cows is also visionary, brilliant, amazingly complex, a must on my ten best reads of the year list, and the second full-length piece of fiction I have finished in less than twenty-four hours this year. It's not only so nasty you can't look away, but it is supremely, blindingly great.

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. 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. When I grew up there was a bull in the field next to the school all by himself, we were all frightened of it. But here the bulls are different. Baby bulls are killed for beef, but not cows, and not a few breeding bulls. They are always part of a herd, and the herd is led by the biggest, probably oldest, female, never the bull. Baby cows will trot off slowly if you approach them, baby bulls will run, even teenage, pre-abbatoir ones, they are all scaredy cats.

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