Book Review: The Jesus Cow by Michael Perry

Until The Jesus Cow, author Michael Perry was known primarily for non-fiction writing which detailed the lives of rural Wisconsinites, so I was very interested to see how he would tackle a work of fiction that dealt with made-up versions of those same people. Whether though fiction or non-fiction, Perry is at his heart a storyteller, and he excels at crafting interesting characters and placing them in interesting situations. As you might expect from a novel called The Jesus Cow, there is a bit of an absurdist tone to much of the book, but it is balanced with serious reflections on faith materialism, loneliness and the vagaries of adult romance.

The plot involves a farmer, Harley Jackson, who births a Holstein calf on Christmas Eve. The calf bears a spot on its flank that looks like the face of Jesus. Concerned about the unwanted attention the calf might bring to his life, he initially tries to hide it, but eventually gives in to temptation and exploits the calf for financial gain. While this is happening, he meets and falls for a new woman in town, and it is in Perry's depiction of the course of this relationship that the book really finds its footing. I suspect there are few readers who will not relate all too well to this particular story arc.

In the end, Perry swaps wink-and-nod humor for all out semi-apocalyptic silliness, and honestly I'm not sure there's really any other way to complete a story like this. The Jesus Cow doesn't have the emotional resonance of Truck: A Love Story, but it is a nicely wrought fiction that will occasionally make you think and occasionally make you laugh, and that's more than I can say for most of the books I read. I grade it B+.

Comments

FRIDAY MATINEE: Midnight Mass (🍺🍺🍺🍺)

I held off writing this review until I had seen all seven episodes of the new Netflix limited series “Midnight Mass.” I’ve been burned in the past by shows that start out well and then devolve into silliness as they progress. While “Mass" doesn’t completely stick the landing, I think even the East German judge would give it a solid 9. Taken as a whole, I think it is as effective a piece of horror as the combined “It” movies from a few years ago, and right on par with “Hereditary” and “Midsommar.” The story revolves around a man returning to his childhood island home after a prison stay for a drunk driving accident that killed a teen girl. Coincidentally, it is the same day the island’s beloved elderly priest, Monsignor Pruitt is supposed to return from a trip to the Holy Land. Unfortunately, the priest has taken ill and is being treated on the mainland. A temporary priest arrives to take his place. The story takes a little while to get going, and anyone who’s familiar with t...

You Label Me, I'll Label You

Sometime around 1970, my parents acquired a "high tech" device known as a Label-It. Manufactured by the DYMO Corporation, the Label-It was an embossing tape printing system that produced a sticky-backed plastic strip onto which the user could custom-print words or short phrases; or for that matter I suppose all the great works of literature, given enough patience and an unlimited supply of tape. The Label-It was gun-shaped with a horizontal alpha-numeric wheel on top. You loaded a spool of plastic tape into the back and fed it through the embossing head. By arranging the wheel so that the desired number or letter was over the tape and pulling the "trigger," the head forced the tape against the raised character and, due the physical properties of the plastic, a white image of the character was transferred to the tape. When the entire word was finished, you hit the "cut" button and removed the label. It was fairly primitive by modern standards, but it was ...

FIELD NOTES: Trust in authority, but verify

At some point in our lives, most of us have been either the victim or the perpetrator of a prank phone call. Most of these calls are harmless. Many are legitimately funny; some are mean-spirited, and a select few are dangerous. In college, some of my buddies and I would call a random number pretending to be from a fictitious sports radio station. We would ask a nonsensical question to (supposedly) win a prize. One question I specifically recall was, “Name the three teams in this year’s Super Bowl.” The “contestant,” likely a teen girl by the sound of her voice, got the first two teams right but, not surprisingly, struggled with the third one. Ultimately, she guessed Pittsburgh, which was “wrong,” but actually a pretty savvy answer given that the Steelers were a perpetual Super Bowl contender in those days. Although those calls don’t represent my finest hour, I think even the “victims,” if they ever even realized they’d been pranked, would admit it was pretty innocuous....

John B. Marek

Search This Blog