Title: Cows

Author/Artist: Matthew Stokoe

Publisher: Creation Books

Media: Book

Reviewer: Pan

This is a book about the need to belong. This is a book about the disparity between the images we see on TV and the reality of the world around us. This is a book about Steven and his search for the life that he sees on TV and from which he is excluded. This is a book that is violent, perverse, obscene, relentlessly repellent and extremely imaginative. It veers from miserablist realism to comic-book outrage to dark fantasy and back again, and in doing so it transcends shock-value to present something far more interesting.

To précis the story would do it no justice, and I’ll avoid focusing on the violent and scatological scenes with which most reviews seem to be fixated. At times it’s heavy going, but to be honest a lot of it is so over the top that it fails to make the impact that a more realistic book would have. It also gives the phrase ‘beef on the bone’ a whole new meaning.

The book’s been compared to the ‘Wasp Factory’ more than once, and I can see why, though I think Iain Banks’s book is the stronger of the two. However, this book reveals an altogether different imagination, one that deserves recognition for its weirdness more than for its ability to repel and repulse.

Matthew Stokoe proves that he’s a sick fuck, but he’s a sick fuck worth reading.