Stokoe doesn’t seem to have thought about the fragmented consciousness of Naked Lunch, or the ecstatic prejudices and violence of Céline. It shouldn’t matter that the resulting artwork is harmonious—the purpose, after all, is to shock—but somehow it does. Now I must admit it’s a bit weird to read Cows (2015) and then pick up the pulpy Fevre Dream (1982) by R. Steven sickens slowly, holed up in his room, watching perfect lives on TV, dreaming of what it would be like to be safe, to be happy, to be loved. After reading what I have just written, you are probably wondering, what is so intense about this story.

It wasn't my stomach forcing that either, I read the infamous "lunch scene" while literally eating lunch lol, but it was my brain!Certainly this book, with its nonstop brutality and descriptions of repulsive sensory experiences, attempts to desensitize the reader much as the main character in this story becomes desensitized and becomes a serial killer. From the outset of this heartbreakingly powerful contemporary noir, Stokoe (High Life) gets the reader deeply emotionally invested in his guilt-ridden narrator, Johnny Richardson. Seriously though, if you are easily offended, have a weak stomach or have any triggers at all, don't bother.

When I first picked up this book, I believed it was about a bunch of cows who turn into some type of "Zombie Apocalypse" and start killing and eating human beings.In fact, this book is so good at creating a warped, immersive reality of its own—inside our protagonist, Steven’s head—that I can wholeheartedly say I absolutely loved it.

I hope to have duped a few of the weak-stomached into reading, say, Peter Sotos or Pan Pantziarka, because they deserve being read).It’s interesting how your TBR can conspire against you to bring similarly themed/content books together. Maybe it’s from being a clinician in my real life who deals with amputation and open ulcers frequently, or maybe it’s from having a four year old and a dog and dealing with their messes, I found it was more of a metaphor for the characters lives that Stokoe used those elements. It showed that while "COWS" used "WOWS" to attract curious readers eager to test their mettle, something about the work stuck with them, made them think about it more deeply beyond the emotional impact of the cheap shock. Things that occur – animal abuse and torture, self mutilation, matricide, infanticide, beastiality, scat play and ingestion and homicide just to name a few. All three featured similar moments of wretched repulsiveness, while all three had great depths of philosophical ideas buried beneath the grotesque content.