Reviews with content warning for Death of parent - Cows

Reviews tagging 'Death of parent'

Cows by Matthew Stokoe

27 reviews

sommarborne's review against another edition

challenging dark fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

This is without a doubt a challenging read. The first 70 pages are fairly brutal to get through and most people can’t seem to get that far.

However, this book is oddly captivating and reads like a deeply disturbing urban fairy tale. The second half of the book reminded me a lot of George Orwell’s Animal Farm. It is better to go into this story expecting it to read like a fairy tale & to not take the story to be “realistic” in any sense of the word.

All of the characters except for Steven (the main character) are obnoxious over the top depictions of various levels of evil or hopelessness. The dialogue, in my opinion, is the worst part of the book. It is annoying to read and never gets better.

The author really spoon feeds you way too much. He doesn’t seem to trust the art of subtle storytelling or showing rather than telling. The dialogue is more fitting of a child’s story where you have to make it clear who the “bad guy” is.

It does come across like the author or, at the very least, the main character does not like women whatsoever or anything with a vagina. There is a good deal of vaginal mutilation in this book & a focus on using that as a form of reaffirming Steven’s sense of masculinity. I do think that was the point but I also feel like the author did not convey this particularly well and it made me roll my eyes several times.

I do not usually comment on the physical descriptors of characters too often, but I have to admit that the book is actually super fatphobic and I mean that for real. Steven’s mother is obese and every scene with her makes a point to mention her fatness in revolting ways meant to emphasize her “evilness” essentially. Like I said, the characters are cartoonishly bad.

There is also a super random use of the n-word for absolutely no reason and I mean NO reason. It was so out of left field I had to reread it ten times over because I kept trying to understand where it came from. The book has nothing to do with racism whatsoever & it is one of the cows that randomly says it? It is toward middleish of the book.

The violence is a bit obnoxious and it reminds me of try hards doing their best to use shock and disgust rather than writing better, but the writing itself actually is good beyond that and the development of Steven’s character arc is surprisingly well done. This might seem wild to admit given the context of this book, but Steven is a weirdly relatable main character and I have to give props to the author for that.

He isn’t relatable in the sense of the extreme and violent choices he makes, but rather he is a well done metaphor of the desire to find a community & a purpose in life when you constantly feel detatched from everything and everyone. For me, the ending of the book was incredibly satisfying and made plenty of sense. It was bittersweet in a super fucked up way.

If you can stomach it, I do think it is worth a read. It isn’t often we have these contemporary fairy tales but it really did remind me of the over the top and bizarre gore you would read in the original Grimms fairy tales & similar stories.

I found the animal violence to be fairly easy to skim without missing tangible points. While the scenes are undeniably upsetting and graphic, I will say that the violence against people in the book are definitely more graphic which I did kinda appreciate.

This is a wild read and I think the beginning and dialogue are the weakest points. This is gonna sound insane but trust me: when the cows start to talk is when the book gets more tolerable. I think a lot of interesting essays could be written about this.

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rarityfemme's review

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Loveable characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

Content Warnings

angreadseverything's review against another edition

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dark medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

1.75

Content Warnings

jfkfanboy's review

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challenging dark emotional mysterious sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.75

Content Warnings

dreamyari's review against another edition

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dark medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

0.5

content warnings: animal cruelty, animal death, blood, body horror, cannibalism, child abuse, child death, death, death of parent, emotional abuse, excrement, gore, islamophobia, mental illness, misogyny, murder, physical abuse, pregnancy, racial slurs, rape, sexism, sexual assault, sexual violence, torture

i’m not even kidding, this and dead inside have the exact same problem of being so formulaic where every chapter is the repeat of the previous one with like. a sentence of a difference. extreme horror is great but only when done with an iota of something that isn’t just ~oooo disgusting description that will make the reader gag~. it sure will!! but what’s the point if that’s all there is? WHY did so many influencers recommend this lmao

Content Warnings