Tries too Hard to be Shocking

This title has been floating around the book groups on Facebook for a while now, and, considering how I feel about animal cruelty (even in fiction), I had some reservations about diving in. It was never far from my radar, though, and this year is the year I decided to take the plunge.

I wasn't sure what to expect going in, as I had heard no particulars about the book, only that it was vile, disgusting, gross... You get the picture. Folks said the same thing about Duncan Ralston's WOOM and Chandler Morrison's Dead Inside, both of which were, while extreme, not as bad as I was led to believe. Well... Matthew Stokoe's Cows certainly delivered, but not in the ways you might expect.

There are two parallel storylines in Cows, one more extreme than the other. You have the domestic story, which tells of Steven's dysfunctional home life, with a mother who hates him and who he, in turn, hates, and an ancient dog on its last legs. There's the love interest, an equally disturbed and dysfunctional young woman who lives in the same building. And then there's the worklife at the slaughterhouse, where Steven appears to thrive. And while the domestic side of the tale is disturbing in its own right, the work storyline is where the story goes off the deep end. Among the debauchery that takes place within the walls of the slaughterhouse, there's a talking cow that has somehow evaded slaughter, as well as a whole herd of cows living beneath the streets.

I'm not going to go into story too much, as I don't think you'd believe me if I tried. Suffice it to say, you need to read (actually, you really don't --but if you choose to, don't say I didn't warn you) this to believe it. I'm sure you'd much rather have another question answered, and that is, Was it as disgusting and vile as folks have made it out to be? Yes. And therein lies the MAJOR problem I had with Cows.

The story in and of itself wouldn't be bad if it had been told in a straightforward manner, but add in the atrocities and it ends up having the opposite effect of what's intended, becoming instead something of an exercise in eyerolls. It seems Stokoe's focus in Cows is to outdo what he's done previously in his attempt to gross you out, to one-up himself, and you can't help but laugh. You certainly can't take it seriously. It all becomes a tad predictable (in regards to his relationship, I called that ending the moment the romance began), and it becomes a game, trying to guess what gross misdeeds the author will come up with next. And because of this, the writing comes across as juvenile, the thing junior high students will write and titter about in the corner of the library. The vile acts that occur within the novella lack the organic nature found in other extreme horror works that I've read, in that they don't arise naturally from the narrative, but rather come across as forced, crammed in like puzzle pieces in the wrong places.

Would I recommend it? Not particularly. Why? Because reading is supposed to be pleasurable, and I found nothing pleasurable about Cows. However, if you feel you need to read it because of its cult status, then by all means, go ahead. I won't try to dissuade you. But as for extreme horror, there are other, better-written works out there in which to invest your time.