Book review: The Cows by Dawn O’Porter
3 Apr
COW [n.]
/kaʊ/
A piece of meat; born to breed; past its sell-by-date; one of the herd.
Women don’t have to fall into a stereotype.
Tara, Cam and Stella are strangers living their own lives as best they can – though when society’s screaming you should live life one way, it can be hard to like what you see in the mirror.
When an extraordinary event ties invisible bonds of friendship between them, one woman’s catastrophe becomes another’s inspiration, and a life lesson to all.
Sometimes it’s ok not to follow the herd.
The Cows is a powerful novel about three women – judging each other, but also themselves. In all the noise of modern life, they need to find their own voice.
When the bright yellow proof of The Cows arrived at my door, I got very excited. I’d heard good things about Dawn O’Porter’s young adult novels and I couldn’t wait to see what she’d written for adult readers. With it’s bold proclamation #DONTFOLLOWTHEHERD and striking yellow and black cover as well as a promise that everyone would be talking about this book in 2017 I jumped straight in!
I wasn’t disappointed. Dawn has written a novel that is frank, honest, funny and a page turner; The Cows might shock you, it might surprise you and it will certainly give you plenty to talk about. My first thought on finishing the book was that I wished the rest of my book group had read it because I really wanted to talk to someone about it and I can just imagine the fun we’d have discussing it.
The Cows tells the stories of Cam, Tara and Stella; three women who don’t know each other at the start of the book but who are all connected by the end of the story. All three live in the vicinity of London but that’s the single uniting factor as the story begins. Cam is a very successful lifestyle blogger, famed for her feminism and for her honesty. She’s passionate about her choice to be on her own with no ties and no intention of having children.
Tara is a TV documentary maker and single mum with a six year old daughter and Stella is a PA to an award winning photographer and struggling to deal with the grief that cancer has caused in her life. Three very different women with very different stories, none of which map directly to my own but I found that I could empathise on a number of levels with all of them at different points in the book. Through Cam, Tara and Stella and their friends and families, Dawn examines what it is to be a woman in 2017.
Set in a social media world where a person can go from unknown to ‘trending’ in 60 seconds, no topic is off limits. From motherhood to masturbation, the scope is wide and that’s what I loved about this story which brings to the fore so many of the judgments that we make about ourselves and others every day and puts them under the microscope.
Dawn also managed to tick the elusive box of making me stop in my tracks with heart-stopping surprise as I read. No spoilers here but it was brilliant to have that moment of shock as I read and as an avid reader it’s a rarity that I don’t see something coming!
The Cows has a life affirming message about taking even the worst of situations and turning it around to make something good. I felt like Dawn O’Porter had given me a push and said ‘get on with it’ when I’d finished reading – and I will!
4/5
The Cows is released on 6th April in hardback and ebook formats by HarperCollins.
Find out more about Dawn and her writing at: http://www.dawnoporter.co.uk/
I’d like to thank the publisher for providing a review copy of this book.
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