The Cow Book by John Connell review powerful tale of bullish battles | Autobiography and memoir
Autobiography and memoir This article is more than 5 years oldReviewThe Cow Book by John Connell review – powerful tale of bullish battles
This article is more than 5 years oldConnell’s moving memoir tracks his life on the family farm, his fights with his father, and charts humanity’s long relationship with cattle
John Connell’s book begins in the middle of the night during one of the wettest winters on record. He is delivering a calf by himself for the first time: “There is blood on my arms and face, but it is a pleasing blood, the blood of life.” It’s a moment of responsibility when Connell needs to prove to himself and his father that he is capable of managing the farm his family has owned for 30 years. The delivery is successful – “he is a fine wee bull” – and Connell passes the test: “Manhood is an important thing in this land. Farming gives us our sense of it, our understanding of ourselves.”
This is a brooding, powerful memoir about a 29-year-old man’s return to the family farm in Ireland and his difficult relationship with his taciturn and short-tempered father. Fleeing his past – a broken relationship in Canada, two aborted careers – and recovering from depression, Connell works on the farm in exchange “for a roof over my head” while he tries to start a novel.
He writes movingly of the people he grew up with, his family’s long history in the area and local Celtic myths: “Everything in this country has a story. Everything is rich with meaning.” As a boy, he recalls watching his father and his uncle’s farm, “as poets of the field, bards of the land”. He still remembers with fondness their first cows, “as a city man might remember a departed pet dog”.
Connell’s memoir also charts our long relationship with cattle, our companions for some 10,000 years: “To speak of cattle is to speak of man.” But the strength and originality of this book clearly lies in Connell’s searingly honest account of rebuilding his life. Returning to the land of his birth plays a big role in that: “In this farm, I have found my Walden, my sustenance. I walk its fields and know I am alive.” But his irascible father doesn’t understand and in a fiery argument he calls his son “a failure” and tells him “I don’t need you”. This brutal scene spurs Connell to write not the novel he intended, but this age-old story of father and son, struggling with nature and with feelings buried too deep for words. As Connell says, they are like “two bulls in the field sizing each other up”.
The Cow Book: A Story of Life on a Family Farm is published by Granta. To order a copy for £13.59 (RRP £15.99) go to guardianbookshop.com or call 0330 333 6846. Free UK p&p over £10, online orders only. Phone orders min p&p of £1.99.
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