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A review by steamyshortwing
The Cows by Dawn O'Porter
3.0
This will probably not be an all encompassing review as I have only listened to the book once and I listened to it in the span of about 80 hours. I will also not be re-reading this book as I believe I will find more and more things to dislike about this book, and that's not how I'd like to spend my time.
I want to commend the book for its efforts, but it really falls short. It is an interesting literary example to shove men to the side to be such plot devices with 2 dimensional personalities and to make Jason the prize to be won at the end. It would have been more interesting if something was *done* with it, some way to exaggerate the flipping on its head. Some way to show a social commentary through the flipping, with that lack of self awareness in the book, it just comes across as lazy writing.
I do want to say perhaps I'm too American for this book, I have never been one for British humor, but I just didn't find any of this book funny, I was gobsmacked when I was 90% through the book and see the genre listed as humor. I'll get to the moments I didn't think were funny (that perhaps were supposed to be?) in a moment.
What I'd first like to address is this book's weird attempt at feminism. Throughout most of this book I couldn't tell if we were supposed to be rooting for any of these characters, they all seemed obnoxious in their own way with no redeemable traits.
Tara being a bad feminist by insisting that her daughter Annie does something “different” in order to “be herself” and Annie wants to be a princess. Instead of Tara taking any stock about how maybe a feminnist can dress up as a princess too? She just glowers and says that her efforts towards Annie doesn’t always work. It’s such a one dimensional way to view feminism, it’s the type of feminism who shames women for wearing makeup because “clearly they only want to do it for male attention.” The whole snowman vs. princess debacle is never addressed past the party. Tara assumes that the ones who gossiped about Annie are the mothers from the party, when she discovers it was her best friend Sophie, there’s one line of passing guilt for blaming the mothers and then the story moves on. I’m not looking for the character to flog themselves, but some self awareness from a mother of a 6 year old and a self proclaimed forward thinking woman would be nice. Tara having scathing hidden thoughts about the mother at her school, being very judgmental to her friend Sophie, not being able to stand up for herself at work and demand due credit really makes me not like this character at the beginning of the book.
Cam is so vile in the description of her sisters saying how their bodies are *ruined* by childbirth, and going on about how miserable they look and seem and gloating to herself about how amazing her life is. When one of her sisters comes over before going to the park, half of that scene is just Cam talking about how her sister having children ruined the best parts of her sister, nevermind maybe Cam’s sister is actually *happy* having kids? And maybe Cam’s sister is Ok and content with no longer being that person? This idea is mildly addressed with Cam’s dad saying he’s OK he gave up comedy for the family, but that conversation stays superficial. Cam makes it very clear she thinks kids are the wrong choice for all women, despite her saying otherwise. This is never addressed and Cam is never really challenged on the kid front besides the idle conversation you’d expect from these topics. She is never shown to show some nuance and compassion and maybe not be so hostile and believe that these women’s bodies were *ruined* by childbirth.
I actually felt the most for Stella at first, I couldn't imagine how isolating it would be to lose a twin, be facing your own mortality at such a young age, your mother gone as well, watching your mother go through horrendous cancer treatments to just pass away anyway, and then for her boyfriend to leave her. Her boyfriend did have some valid things to say when he broke up with her and I was hoping that was going to be the catalyst for change in this book.
Change. That was the big thing I was looking for in this book, when these flawed characters were introduced to me (the reader), I was so hoping for some wonderful redemption arcs.
Instead of getting meaningful redemption arcs where these characters grow as people and they go through introspection and they realize they have flaws that need to be worked on, we get these grandiose speeches or a confession of love that’s rejected that is then immediately followed by falling down the stairs and snapping the character’s neck.
Tara has an incredibly awkward, repetitive fight with the mothers outside the school where one mother says that that house is all her hard work from her own business and puts Tara in her place, but Tara is still the good guy at the end of the fight because she says she’s going to be the best for her daughter and be there for her daughter and that they all need to put up with it. I was expecting everyone to clap because of how cliched the entire scene was. We also never address how Tara is no better than anyone else because what if they *were* stay at home mothers and never it is addressed that mothers don’t have to work to appease to Tara, but as a theme in the book that I will go over in this review, superficial revelations is most of what we’ll get in this book.
Instead, we get Tara sweeping the internet back on her side with making herself out to be the victim in a YouTube video, we get Cam dying in one of the most ludicrous deaths I've ever seen in any piece of media, and Stella becoming the villain to be overcome at the end of what now ends as a romantic comedy.
We get the inside of Stella’s mind and we see her pain and the explanation of how someone could lash out because of the pain inside themselves. This gets wrapped up in a nice little bow so everyone can just imagine a crazy Stella when they get an internet troll. Stella also mentions suicide and self harm and never is that addressed, it’s clear she needs therapy, but nope, all is fixed cuz our protoganist Tara sweeps her off her feet with a documentary and they all lived happily ever after. Dawn O’Porter began to address extremely complex and dark topics that she clearly did not have the experience to tackle. Self harm was mentioned as if that was just a normal expected thing, and something that just automatically goes away when your life is perfect. It was another very one dimensional way of viewing the world.
Were we supposed to hate Stella’s boyfriend for leaving her because he felt like a puppet in her life? Were we supposed to be cheering him on for leaving? So much of this book, I could not tell how the writer wanted us to feel about these characters. At no point does Stella ever go into detail and deeply reflect on the failed relationship and challenge herself to grow and move on from grief. She becomes the bald crazy woman who pulled her hair out that Tara has to run into the middle of an intimate encounter, in true heroine fashion to save the dame in distress. It was so unfortunate to see Stella be relegated to plot device and feel good masturbatory material for Tara. So much more could have been done with Stella.
One thing that perhaps was supposed to be funny, that I didn’t find personally funny, was Tara’s dad. Specifically his reaction to the video being released about Tara. On his birthday he smashes multiple bits of fine china, and Tara’s mom goes after him to try to get him to stop. That is brushed off as “Oh, that’s dad.” When Tara is talking at dinner about something as simple as getting an interview over the video, Tara’s dad keeps slamming his fist on the table, and then eventually leaves the room haughtily. Perhaps this is a cultural difference between the UK and the US, but in my circles in the US, we would see that as signs of domestic violence, and my immediate reaction was concern for Tara and Tara’s mom, I didn’t find any of that funny at all (perhaps it wasn’t supposed to be, but it was just so uncomfortable how everyone just didn’t address his violent behavior).
At some point in this review I'll need to talk about the sex scenes, maybe I'm just a loose liberal millennial who doesn't know what "real" sex is like, but the way Dawn writes sex scenes makes me feel like a man is writing them. We have 2 seconds of foreplay and suddenly penetration, in literally *every* sex scene described, are 40 year old women just more up and rearing to go for penetration than I am? They just felt uncomfortable and out of place, and like when a car advert puts a woman scantily clad in an ad to get you to "buy the car" in the same way that these sex scenes are supposed to hook the reader somehow.
On the note of unrealistic sex scenes, there were a few other scenes besides the grandiose fight Tara had with the mothers that felt unbelievable. When Jason got hit by a cyclist, the cyclist collected himself and moved on without a word, and Jason lost his phone down the drain. Perhaps this is more common in London and surrounding neighborhoods, but having lived in a big city myself with it’s own bike lanes, this is not something I’ve ever seen. I was willing to let this slide up until Cam’s death.
There were many moments that were so cliched that I thought a character was going to snap out of a daydream, or an actual dream at any moment and none of it was real. I had to keep reminding myself this is contemporary fiction and perhaps this is just how contemporary fiction is. I read very little contemporary fiction, certainly no British contemporary fiction before this.
Another conversation that didn’t feel realistic was one of the last scenes in the novel, where Tara and Jason decide they’re together. Jason says that he can’t believe Tara is his girlfriend, and she says he can’t just decide that, and he seems mildly taken aback and shoots back with “What? Is this the 50s?” There seems to be this implication in the air and in the book and from the author that sex = relationship and it’s awkard to have a discussion around it. This and the sex scenes that, while written from women perspective, are so barely focused on the women in sex it makes me feel like it was written by men, makes me very uncomfortable, and is disappointing to see in what seems to be presenting itself as a feminist book. This one scene alone isn’t enough to nail the book as misguided, but this is just another part of the puzzle that makes me as a whole disappointed with any movement this book was trying to push.
I’d like to discuss how Cam was my least favorite character in this book and I was so hoping for her to change, and the second we get a glimmer of change out of her, she’s killed off. Given how quickly the book wraps up after Cam’s death, I’m left with the impression that she was killed off to make way for our protagonist and get her happy ending, and that Cam was to be an example of a childfree woman, but do anything meaningful or interesting or end this arc in a meaningful way? Well that clearly wasn’t happening.
Cam clearly had an unhealthy relationship with the internet, and it’s not healthy for anyone to be a shut in, and it’s clear that it isn’t good for Cam. Lying naked on her shag rug was one of the most bizarre and out of left field visuals to get at the beginning of a chapter. Talking proudly about how she spends hours picking at blackheads and she just sits in her apartment, naked and alone, surrounded by luxury goods, is not something to brag about. Yet Cam seems to be presented as a hero for being this superficial stereotype of childfree women that people on the internet claim they want and claim they want nothing else. Not even a friend to share it with.
We almost address that Cam’s relationship with the internet and so much time alone is unhealthy. Cam being nervous about her persona online vs. her persona in person and feeling conflicted about this dichotomy is never addressed past the one blog post that made her anxious. There are so many threads with Cam that are started and never go beyond superficial reflections.
She realizes (moments before she’s killed off) that she has mistreated the man in her life and she wants to have him in her life more as well, and the last thing she says is that she doesn’t feel the same way about him after he says that he loves her. We never get to explore how she misjudged Mark, and maybe she’s misjudged everyone in her life, given how she realized so much about her dad, mother, and Mark, and then she dies. We never see Mark again after Cam is killed off, we never get to see how the woman he loved rejected him and then died moments later, he’s shoved out of the plot about as quickly as he was shoehorned in.
The most in depth growth we get with Cam (and in the entire book) is the wonderful conversation with Cam and her mom in the car about her abortion and how Cam’s mom had a go at Cam about how she’s not pathetic for having kids and Cam’s blog makes her feel that way. Cam is surprised at this, but doesn’t consider changing her behavior, doesn’t address her inward nasty thoughts, just focuses on how her blog is not meant to attack parents (though it’s clear her inner thoughts are). And we never get a chance for this character to grow as they’re killed off in this bizarre twist.
Cam was not the only one who was cruel to other women in a way to validate herself, Tara does this as well.
Review finished in the comment attached to this review.
I want to commend the book for its efforts, but it really falls short. It is an interesting literary example to shove men to the side to be such plot devices with 2 dimensional personalities and to make Jason the prize to be won at the end. It would have been more interesting if something was *done* with it, some way to exaggerate the flipping on its head. Some way to show a social commentary through the flipping, with that lack of self awareness in the book, it just comes across as lazy writing.
I do want to say perhaps I'm too American for this book, I have never been one for British humor, but I just didn't find any of this book funny, I was gobsmacked when I was 90% through the book and see the genre listed as humor. I'll get to the moments I didn't think were funny (that perhaps were supposed to be?) in a moment.
What I'd first like to address is this book's weird attempt at feminism. Throughout most of this book I couldn't tell if we were supposed to be rooting for any of these characters, they all seemed obnoxious in their own way with no redeemable traits.
Tara being a bad feminist by insisting that her daughter Annie does something “different” in order to “be herself” and Annie wants to be a princess. Instead of Tara taking any stock about how maybe a feminnist can dress up as a princess too? She just glowers and says that her efforts towards Annie doesn’t always work. It’s such a one dimensional way to view feminism, it’s the type of feminism who shames women for wearing makeup because “clearly they only want to do it for male attention.” The whole snowman vs. princess debacle is never addressed past the party. Tara assumes that the ones who gossiped about Annie are the mothers from the party, when she discovers it was her best friend Sophie, there’s one line of passing guilt for blaming the mothers and then the story moves on. I’m not looking for the character to flog themselves, but some self awareness from a mother of a 6 year old and a self proclaimed forward thinking woman would be nice. Tara having scathing hidden thoughts about the mother at her school, being very judgmental to her friend Sophie, not being able to stand up for herself at work and demand due credit really makes me not like this character at the beginning of the book.
Cam is so vile in the description of her sisters saying how their bodies are *ruined* by childbirth, and going on about how miserable they look and seem and gloating to herself about how amazing her life is. When one of her sisters comes over before going to the park, half of that scene is just Cam talking about how her sister having children ruined the best parts of her sister, nevermind maybe Cam’s sister is actually *happy* having kids? And maybe Cam’s sister is Ok and content with no longer being that person? This idea is mildly addressed with Cam’s dad saying he’s OK he gave up comedy for the family, but that conversation stays superficial. Cam makes it very clear she thinks kids are the wrong choice for all women, despite her saying otherwise. This is never addressed and Cam is never really challenged on the kid front besides the idle conversation you’d expect from these topics. She is never shown to show some nuance and compassion and maybe not be so hostile and believe that these women’s bodies were *ruined* by childbirth.
I actually felt the most for Stella at first, I couldn't imagine how isolating it would be to lose a twin, be facing your own mortality at such a young age, your mother gone as well, watching your mother go through horrendous cancer treatments to just pass away anyway, and then for her boyfriend to leave her. Her boyfriend did have some valid things to say when he broke up with her and I was hoping that was going to be the catalyst for change in this book.
Change. That was the big thing I was looking for in this book, when these flawed characters were introduced to me (the reader), I was so hoping for some wonderful redemption arcs.
Instead of getting meaningful redemption arcs where these characters grow as people and they go through introspection and they realize they have flaws that need to be worked on, we get these grandiose speeches or a confession of love that’s rejected that is then immediately followed by falling down the stairs and snapping the character’s neck.
Tara has an incredibly awkward, repetitive fight with the mothers outside the school where one mother says that that house is all her hard work from her own business and puts Tara in her place, but Tara is still the good guy at the end of the fight because she says she’s going to be the best for her daughter and be there for her daughter and that they all need to put up with it. I was expecting everyone to clap because of how cliched the entire scene was. We also never address how Tara is no better than anyone else because what if they *were* stay at home mothers and never it is addressed that mothers don’t have to work to appease to Tara, but as a theme in the book that I will go over in this review, superficial revelations is most of what we’ll get in this book.
Instead, we get Tara sweeping the internet back on her side with making herself out to be the victim in a YouTube video, we get Cam dying in one of the most ludicrous deaths I've ever seen in any piece of media, and Stella becoming the villain to be overcome at the end of what now ends as a romantic comedy.
We get the inside of Stella’s mind and we see her pain and the explanation of how someone could lash out because of the pain inside themselves. This gets wrapped up in a nice little bow so everyone can just imagine a crazy Stella when they get an internet troll. Stella also mentions suicide and self harm and never is that addressed, it’s clear she needs therapy, but nope, all is fixed cuz our protoganist Tara sweeps her off her feet with a documentary and they all lived happily ever after. Dawn O’Porter began to address extremely complex and dark topics that she clearly did not have the experience to tackle. Self harm was mentioned as if that was just a normal expected thing, and something that just automatically goes away when your life is perfect. It was another very one dimensional way of viewing the world.
Were we supposed to hate Stella’s boyfriend for leaving her because he felt like a puppet in her life? Were we supposed to be cheering him on for leaving? So much of this book, I could not tell how the writer wanted us to feel about these characters. At no point does Stella ever go into detail and deeply reflect on the failed relationship and challenge herself to grow and move on from grief. She becomes the bald crazy woman who pulled her hair out that Tara has to run into the middle of an intimate encounter, in true heroine fashion to save the dame in distress. It was so unfortunate to see Stella be relegated to plot device and feel good masturbatory material for Tara. So much more could have been done with Stella.
One thing that perhaps was supposed to be funny, that I didn’t find personally funny, was Tara’s dad. Specifically his reaction to the video being released about Tara. On his birthday he smashes multiple bits of fine china, and Tara’s mom goes after him to try to get him to stop. That is brushed off as “Oh, that’s dad.” When Tara is talking at dinner about something as simple as getting an interview over the video, Tara’s dad keeps slamming his fist on the table, and then eventually leaves the room haughtily. Perhaps this is a cultural difference between the UK and the US, but in my circles in the US, we would see that as signs of domestic violence, and my immediate reaction was concern for Tara and Tara’s mom, I didn’t find any of that funny at all (perhaps it wasn’t supposed to be, but it was just so uncomfortable how everyone just didn’t address his violent behavior).
At some point in this review I'll need to talk about the sex scenes, maybe I'm just a loose liberal millennial who doesn't know what "real" sex is like, but the way Dawn writes sex scenes makes me feel like a man is writing them. We have 2 seconds of foreplay and suddenly penetration, in literally *every* sex scene described, are 40 year old women just more up and rearing to go for penetration than I am? They just felt uncomfortable and out of place, and like when a car advert puts a woman scantily clad in an ad to get you to "buy the car" in the same way that these sex scenes are supposed to hook the reader somehow.
On the note of unrealistic sex scenes, there were a few other scenes besides the grandiose fight Tara had with the mothers that felt unbelievable. When Jason got hit by a cyclist, the cyclist collected himself and moved on without a word, and Jason lost his phone down the drain. Perhaps this is more common in London and surrounding neighborhoods, but having lived in a big city myself with it’s own bike lanes, this is not something I’ve ever seen. I was willing to let this slide up until Cam’s death.
There were many moments that were so cliched that I thought a character was going to snap out of a daydream, or an actual dream at any moment and none of it was real. I had to keep reminding myself this is contemporary fiction and perhaps this is just how contemporary fiction is. I read very little contemporary fiction, certainly no British contemporary fiction before this.
Another conversation that didn’t feel realistic was one of the last scenes in the novel, where Tara and Jason decide they’re together. Jason says that he can’t believe Tara is his girlfriend, and she says he can’t just decide that, and he seems mildly taken aback and shoots back with “What? Is this the 50s?” There seems to be this implication in the air and in the book and from the author that sex = relationship and it’s awkard to have a discussion around it. This and the sex scenes that, while written from women perspective, are so barely focused on the women in sex it makes me feel like it was written by men, makes me very uncomfortable, and is disappointing to see in what seems to be presenting itself as a feminist book. This one scene alone isn’t enough to nail the book as misguided, but this is just another part of the puzzle that makes me as a whole disappointed with any movement this book was trying to push.
I’d like to discuss how Cam was my least favorite character in this book and I was so hoping for her to change, and the second we get a glimmer of change out of her, she’s killed off. Given how quickly the book wraps up after Cam’s death, I’m left with the impression that she was killed off to make way for our protagonist and get her happy ending, and that Cam was to be an example of a childfree woman, but do anything meaningful or interesting or end this arc in a meaningful way? Well that clearly wasn’t happening.
Cam clearly had an unhealthy relationship with the internet, and it’s not healthy for anyone to be a shut in, and it’s clear that it isn’t good for Cam. Lying naked on her shag rug was one of the most bizarre and out of left field visuals to get at the beginning of a chapter. Talking proudly about how she spends hours picking at blackheads and she just sits in her apartment, naked and alone, surrounded by luxury goods, is not something to brag about. Yet Cam seems to be presented as a hero for being this superficial stereotype of childfree women that people on the internet claim they want and claim they want nothing else. Not even a friend to share it with.
We almost address that Cam’s relationship with the internet and so much time alone is unhealthy. Cam being nervous about her persona online vs. her persona in person and feeling conflicted about this dichotomy is never addressed past the one blog post that made her anxious. There are so many threads with Cam that are started and never go beyond superficial reflections.
She realizes (moments before she’s killed off) that she has mistreated the man in her life and she wants to have him in her life more as well, and the last thing she says is that she doesn’t feel the same way about him after he says that he loves her. We never get to explore how she misjudged Mark, and maybe she’s misjudged everyone in her life, given how she realized so much about her dad, mother, and Mark, and then she dies. We never see Mark again after Cam is killed off, we never get to see how the woman he loved rejected him and then died moments later, he’s shoved out of the plot about as quickly as he was shoehorned in.
The most in depth growth we get with Cam (and in the entire book) is the wonderful conversation with Cam and her mom in the car about her abortion and how Cam’s mom had a go at Cam about how she’s not pathetic for having kids and Cam’s blog makes her feel that way. Cam is surprised at this, but doesn’t consider changing her behavior, doesn’t address her inward nasty thoughts, just focuses on how her blog is not meant to attack parents (though it’s clear her inner thoughts are). And we never get a chance for this character to grow as they’re killed off in this bizarre twist.
Cam was not the only one who was cruel to other women in a way to validate herself, Tara does this as well.
Review finished in the comment attached to this review.