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Book Review: Cows by Matthew Stokoe

This book stinks.

I don't mean that in a disparaging way. You can smell this book. It's an unpleasant mixture of rot, shit and blood. You can feel the slimy viscera as you turn the pages. It stains your hands.

The story of Cows revolves around Steven. A man who has lived under the reign of terror of his abusive mother, who he rightly refers to as the Hagbeast. He pines for the woman who lives upstairs, he bears the mental and physical abuse the Hagbeast heaps upon him and he begins doing grunt work at a slaughterhouse on the outskirts of the city. At the job he meets Cripps, the profoundly disturbed foreman. However, Cripps turns out to be the catalyst Steven needs to rid himself of the Hagbeast and start a normal life. A normal, happy life like the families on TV.

There is a lot going on in this 180+ page book. Its story is bizarre and nightmarish. It deals with themes of alienation, 'release', the oppressed becoming oppressors and the effects of media on the everyday life. As previously stated, this is not a pleasant read. Cows is relentless in its violence and perversion. The only book I can think to compare it to is Hubert Selby Jr's The Room. It's no surprise that Stokoe names Selby as a major influence. Like Selby, Stokoe creates very human characters. Even as they engage is behavior that should be unbelievable and unlikable, their hellish circumstances make them feel sympathetic and their reactions understandable. 

At times, the novel seems uneven in its tone. The book reads as the darkest of dark comedy, but some of the funny moments feel they were unintentional. Attempts at shock that just ended up being too silly. However, this is a case of stumbling without ever falling. Stokoe is a skilled enough writer, that he absorbed me into moments and plot turns that, if described by me, would seem absolutely ridiculous. Ridiculous in ways that would take one out of the story, that is. The moments are still ridiculous in an 'absurdist' way.

This is a harrowing read. However, if you like strange stories and are looking for a read that challenges the mind and the stomach, I highly recommend this. I'm looking forward to reading the rest of Stokoe's work.

Buy Cows by Matthew Stokoe here.

Fairy Story (Short Story)

Once upon a time, there was a fairy who fell in love with a human. The other fairies told her she was crazy. After all, how could it work? He was so much bigger than her. She ignored the others and continued to pine for him, watching him from the tree where the fairies lived every time he came to the park. He would always sit on the same bench, reading whatever book he had brought with him. She would sit there in the tree, thinking he was so handsome and wishing she was the same size as him. Finally, one day, she got up the courage to leave the safety of the tree and fly over to him. When she flew down in front of him and onto the page of his book, he was astonished! He had never seen a fairy before. They always kept themselves hidden so well.

She tried to tell him how she felt about him, but he just gave a her a confused look and leaned down, cocking his head so his ear faced her. She repeated what she said, but he still didn't understand. He tried saying something to her. His voice boomed like an explosion and she had to cover her ears. He covered his mouth and started speaking lower, but she couldn't understand him either. Everything he said just sounded like gibberish. Quickly, she realized they were speaking different languages. At first, she hung her head because she couldn't tell him what she was feeling. However, he took her in the palm of her hand and stood up. He pointed to her, then to himself, then down the road where he walked to the park everyday. She understood that he wanted to take her home. She nodded. She flew next to him as he walked down the road, leading her back to his house.

He showed her to his study where he looked through all of his books, trying to find some information on the language she spoke. But he found nothing. Eventually, it got very late and both the man and the fairy got very tired. He made a bed for her out of tissues and a matchbox and went to bed. The next day, he came back and tried to find ways to communicate with the fairy. But he couldn't dedicate all his to her. He had classes to teach and had to leave for most of the day. The fairy mostly sat around, feeling lonely or flying around house until he came back.

One day, after weeks of working together, they came up with a way to communicate with a simple written language. It was difficult for the fairy. He whittled down a pencil small enough for her to use, but it was still heavy and she had to drag it across the white sheets of paper he gave her so she could write big enough for him to read her messages. But now, after all this time, she could finally tell him how she felt. That night she barely slept, trying to come up with the best way to say it. She knew that this language they worked out was far too simple to write any elaborate love letters. So, in the end she simply wrote, “I love you.” across the page and folded it up.

The next day, her heart was pounding as she heard him enter the study. But before she had a chance to give him the note she wrote, he gave her a note of his own. It explained that his sister had asked to him to watch her son until tomorrow. The boy was known for making trouble and he wanted her to stay hidden in the study to make sure he didn't hurt her. The fairy was a little disappointed but after thinking about it, she realized just how long she had been waiting to confess her love to him. One more day wouldn't be too long to wait. She sat the note aside and entertained her self by flying around the study. During the middle of the day, the door opened and a little boy came in. The fairy was frighted and hid behind an inkwell on the desk, but the man quickly came in and pulled the boy out. She overheard the man say something to boy in an angry tone.

Latter that night, as she was sleeping in her matchbox she was awoken by the door opening. It was the little boy again. He turned on the lights and started looking around the study. She knew she couldn't move, otherwise the boy might see her. So she stayed as still as possible, hiding under her tissue blanket. She heard the boy opening drawers in the desk and rustling through the contents. When the sounds stopped she thought the boy had lost interest. She was wrong. Her tissue blanket was lifted off of her and the boy picked her up with his fingers, bringing her up to his face to examine her. She tried to fly away but he had her pinched too tightly. So tight that she was afraid she would be crushed. The boy examined this thing he had found, and found that its struggling was amusing. He believed it must be some kind of insect.

The boy grabbed the folded note she wrote to the man that was laying on the desk. He moved it to the center of the desk and set her down on it, holding her there with her finger. He reached in one of the open drawers and grabbed a pin. He took the pin and drove it through the fairy's hand. She screamed loudly and tried to pull her hand away but she'd been stuck the desk. The boy heard her quiet and high pitched crying and started giggling. This was just like those pinned bugs his teacher had on display at school. He pulled out three more pins and stuck her other hands and both her feet so she was spread eagle. She struggled and cried and prayed that the man would come in and save her. But he didn't come, and the child's giggling grew louder and started to hurt her ears. The boy then grabbed her butterfly like wings and started tugging on them. Eventually her wings separated from her back. The boy set them aside, while the blood from her back soaked into the note. Finally, the boy took the inkwell and dumped it on the fairy. She started coughing and spitting as it got in her mouth, she was blinded as it got in her eyes and she felt it leak into her wounds making them hurt even worse. Suddenly the boy heard a loud car horn outside and immediately dashed out of the study, slamming the door behind him. The fairy laid in a puddle of ink and blood. She tried to hang on, hoping that if she could just make it through the night, the man might be able to save her. But soon she felt herself slipping away. She was getting dizzy from blood loss. Before she gave in to oblivion, her last hope was that the man would still see the note and would know what she never had the chance to tell him.

The next morning, the man's sister came by to pick up her son. After they left the man rushed to his study and opened the door. He noticed the light was on and he was certain it was off the other day. His heart sank. He immediately went over to the desk and saw what was left of the poor fairy. He yelled and poked her, hoping in vain that she was still alive but he got no reaction. The man dropped to his knees, buried his face in his hands and wept. After he composed himself he got up and, with tears still running down his face, gently removed the pins from the fairy's hands and feet. He picked her up and carefully put her back in her matchbox bed and laid her torn off wings over her. He put the cover back on the matchbox. He picked up the paper that the fairy was pinned on and opened it. He could see that she had written something on it, but it was too stained with blood and ink to read. He folded up the paper and put it in the matchbox with the fairy.

The man took the matchbox into his backyard and dug a small hole. He placed the matchbox in the hole and filled it back up. He carved cross out of a piece of wood to mark where he buried her. Then he said a prayer for the fairy before he left. Eventually, the wind, the rain and the sun rotted the cross away. But not a single blade of grass ever grew again in that tiny plot of dirt.