Holy Cow

by David Duchovny

"Elsie Bovary is a cow, and a pretty happy one at that--her long, lazy days are spent eating, napping, and chatting with her best friend, Mallory. One night, Elsie and Mallory sneak out of their pasture ... [and] Elsie finds herself drawn to the farmhouse. Through the window, she sees the farmer's family gathered around a bright Box God--and what the Box God reveals about something called an 'industrial meat farm' shakes Elsie's understanding of her world to its core. There's only one solution: escape to a better, safer world. And so a motley crew is formed: Elsie; Jerry--excuse me, Shalom--a cranky, Torah-reading pig who's recently converted to Judaism; and Tom, a suave (in his own mind, at least) turkey who can't fly, but who can work an iPhone with his beak"--

• ISBN10: 0374172072
• ISBN13: 9780374172077
• Publish Date: 3 February 2015 (first published 1 February 2015)
• Publish Status: Out of Print
• Out of Print: 12 January 2022
• Publish Country: US
• Imprint: Farrar, Straus & Giroux Inc
• Format: Hardcover
• Pages: 224
• Language: English

Reviews

[thepunktheory]

Full review on my blog: www.thepunktheory.wordpress.com

First of all, I read this book in German and I have the distinct feeling that it's much better in English (as it is so often the case). Nevertheless, I really enjoyed this novel. David Duchovny (who as it turns out was about to get his Doctor in Literature in Yale before he started acting) wrote a witty and funny first book that I honestly hadn't seen coming. The story is weird but yet adorable. The fact that it's told by Elsie herself is refreshing. Holy Cow delivers an important message: animals have feelings to, you should think about what you eat. However, how the message was presented was a bit of a letdown. As I've said before, the book might be funnier in English (translations often ruin some of the fun) but many of the jokes were very flat and much too silly for my taste. The story would still have been funny if the tone had been a bit more serious! Especially the constant pop-culture references that felt more than forced began to be annoying after some time. In general, I thought that Duchovny had some nice ideas but the whole thing was a bit shallow. The book itself isn't too long and several times I had wished for something a bit deeper.

[Rinn]

I received this book for free in a Goodreads giveaway. Also posted on my blog, Rinn Reads.

This book was… uh, not really my kind of thing. At all. I read it in about three hours, but seven pages into it I already hated the tone and the awful jokes. So by that point, I was truly glad it was only 250 pages or so.

Holy Cow follows a young cow who learns the truth about ‘meat farms’, and decides to move to India where she won’t be eaten. She is joined by her friend Tom the Turkey, who wants to go to Turkey, and a pig called Shalom who has recently coverted to the Jewish faith and decides to move to Israel. The only problem – well, they’re animals, and can’t just waltz onto a plane.

But oh – they can.

I just didn’t quite get where this book was going. The characters used slang like ‘totes cray-cray and ‘amazeballs’, as well as actually saying ‘OMG’, and every time slang was used I found myself grinding my teeth (pls pay for my dental work Mr. Duchovny, thanks). And let’s forget all about that dreaded word, the worst one ever… ‘bae’. No. No no no. Please don’t ever use that in a book – okay, maybe it would work in a book where the characters are all teen HUMANS, but there is no excuse this time.

There were also about 50 mentions of ‘my editor told me to do this so I will…’ as well as pop culture references and even a reference or two to porn. This entire book felt like one atrocious mess.

The only redeeming feature was the illustrations, which were really quite cute. Elsie was only a likeable character when she was being serious, but sadly the moral of the story was pretty much downplayed and hidden behind all the ‘humour’.

Try again, Mulder.