A wild little read - I appreciated it even more after learning that it was originally published 35 years ago. Ever relevant and contemporary in 2018. Very visceral read which will be hard to forget.

It was a surprise for me to realise that this novel was originally published thirty-five years ago. Its themes and subjects are so completely relevant to 2018! Sterchi explores xenophobia towards migrant workers and also the way in which we treat - and mistreat - the animals we raise for our food. For anyone who did Veganuary this year and whose commitment is wavering, Cow is a powerful read to set you right back on track.



Cow begins as Spanish cow-hand Ambrosio arrives in the rural Swiss idyll of Innenwald. Small farms raise contented cows, pigs and hens the old-fashioned way; the village makes its own cheeses and hams. It should be bliss. But the villagers, almost without exception, are suspicious of the new outsider and side together to close him out. Why should a Spaniard be given a Swiss job (even though there is no local person out of work). We soon see that local labour isn't the only issue dividing Innenwald. Several of the farms have installed new-fangled milking machines instead of milking by hand. And they are starting to buy in chemicals instead of spreading dung from their own cows. It's so much quicker - more modern and efficient ...



Cow jumps in time between the Knuchel farm where the family is still staunchly committed to gentle but labour-intensive methods, and a nearby town abbatoir where Ambrisio is working some seven years later. We know he loses his farm job but don't immediately know how, and we soon see that the Knuchel farm must have been lost to modernity too. The abattoir scenes are powerful. The violence of slaughter and butchery is casually (and I believe accurately) portrayed which left me with memorable impressions of how food animals are killed and processed. It is something I think we should all be aware of, especially people who eat meat, but this subject is usually coyly hidden from public view. Sterchi portrays the abattoir workers realistically and sensitively. I liked the chapters where we are in the midst of their gossip and chatter. These are not innately cruel men, but men forced into inhumane actions in order to keep their jobs.



I was, strangely, reminded of Harriette Arnow's The Dollmaker while reading Cow. In that book a rural American family is sucked into the hell of industrial Detroit between the wars. In this book, the respectful farming of generations is cast aside for the same ideal of industralisation as a universal answer. Speed, quantity and profit over humanity and health. I suspect many readers will shy away from Cow, preferring to remain ignorant about our mass produced food supply. However I would recommend this book widely. It is, in itself, simply a very good story and an engrossing read, and also a insightful portrayal of a way of farming which isn't quite completely lost to us which, I think, desperately needs to become widespread again.

Cow by Beat Sterchi is something more than a story of a Spanish worker and a cow.  Sterchi apprenticed as a butcher after secondary school. In 1970 he emigrated to Canada, where he carried out various activities and incidentally completed an evening school. He completed his studies in English at the University of British Columbia near Vancouver with a bachelor's degree. In 1975 he went to Honduras, where he worked in the capital Tegucigalpa until 1977 as an English teacher and first poems published in English and German. From 1977 to 1982 he studied at McGill University in Montréal and worked as a teacher at the local Goethe-Institut.  Cow is his first novel.

What starts as a simple story of a Spanish guest worker arriving to work in a small Swiss dairy village.  He works on the farm earning the respect of the farmer, Knuchel.  The Knuchel treats him, Ambrosio, well and even buys new clothes for his worker.  Ambrosio arrived in shorts and sandals and the clothes of the warmer Spanish climate.  He earns the farmer's respect.  Bolsch is the farmer's prize cow and has the run of the farm she is the queen in the matriarchy of cows.  Ambrosia next finds himself in the slaughterhouse after seven years of hard work.  Bolsch also finds herself in the same slaughterhouse.

Sterchi gives the reader a very detailed look into milk cows from milking to calving.  The new textbook descriptions blending well with the story.  Also, the reader will be introduced to the workings of the slaughterhouse as well as the men who wind up working there.  The reader follows the animals from stunning, to draining the blood:

I open your throat, following the strands of neck muscle, cut you open as far as the gristly white of your windpipe I sever muscle from muscle, vessel from vessel.

Even the blood is saved by and adding a declotting agent. (It will be used in feed).  A man removes the offal careful not to cut into the intestines and organs.  A slip will ruin the meat.  The reader will learn which vertebrae is separated on steers and cows when quartering the carcass.  It is all part of the disassembly line. The slaughterhouse has no redeeming qualities to it.  It is where the unuseful animals are sent and less desirable men work.  It is a darkness that exists outside of the dairy village.

The farm represents a lighter place.  Knuchel cares for his cows.  He treats their wounds, fusses over their diet, and follows the politics of his heard.  There is a positive connection between man and animal, even if the animal is clearly a servant of man and will one day wind up in the slaughterhouse.  One day; but not today.  The farm is life to the slaughterhouse's death.

The Cow is deeper than it appears.  Ambrosio is clearly an outsider and treated rather poorly by everyone in the village except Knuchel.  To drive the xenophobia home, the town itself is called Innerwald strictly translated it means a paused woodland.  On the surface, it sounds like an inside place, introverted.  There is a battle between Knuchel and the rest of the village over milking machines and artificial insemination.  Knuchel opposes both.  Ambrosio is hired as a milker instead of giving the job to machines.  Knuchel tells the mayor when getting Bolsch inseminated by a bull that he couldn't drink the milk of an inseminated cow.  There is something unclean and unnatural about the process.  Cow is also a story of flaws. Ambrosio is flawed because he is an outsider and does not speak any German.  He is essentially run out of town.  Even in the slaughterhouse, we are reminded that he is flawed by his losing a finger.  Bolsch is also flawed despite her greatness and standing; she does not produce a useful cow.  In seven attempts it is always a useless male calf. She, for all her greatness, will not produce a prize milk cow.

More than simply a novel Cow is literature.  It contains far more than entertainment.  It teaches and instructs the reader.  The violence of the slaughterhouse is used to reinforce the other messages in the book.  This is not an easy book to put down or to forget.



The forward is written by the translator Michael Hoffmann and the introduction is by Eileen Battersby.  Available February 8, 2018.