Feisty, funny, feelgood debut that refuses to follow the herd
THE COWS by Dawn O’Porter Harper Collins, £14.99
DAWN O’PORTER’S new novel opens with Tara, a documentary maker and single mother who lurches from one disaster to the next, battling the judgment of her colleagues and the other mums at the school gate.
Then Tara finds herself turned on after saying goodbye to a hot date and she gets rather carried away in an empty train carriage on the journey home. Little does she realise that a stranger has filmed her private moment.
When they share that film online, Tara is horrified to become an overnight sensation.
Stella lives a few miles away from Tara in London but the two women are strangers, with Stella inhabiting a completely different world. After losing her mum and twin sister to cancer, she is desperate to find a way to get pregnant before undergoing drastic preventative surgery.
She is also contending with a loveless relationship and she starts to see a darker side to herself as the plot unfolds.
Stella is fiercely jealous of Cam, a successful blogger who also lives in London. Cam leads a glamorous lifestyle and has a hunky younger lover. She insists she does not want children or a committed relationship but deep down she knows something is missing from her life.
When the three women’s lives unexpectedly collide, they are forced to confront their demons and re-evaluate the judgments they make about themselves and others.
Dawn O’Porter’s first novel for adults is sometimes hilarious and sometimes poignant but always rollicking and fast-paced.
She draws on her background in making documentaries to give an honest, unflinching portrayal of three fascinating, convincing and funny characters.
She writes from the heart about the importance of female friendship and how people sometimes let each other down.
However the supporting characters are onedimensional, especially the boyfriends and male bosses who are either emotionally stunted or implausibly sensitive.
O’Porter also satirises the way people’s lives can be exposed online, exploring how the age of the internet has blurred the boundaries between our public and private lives so that women are more closely and unfairly scrutinised now than ever.
But The Cows’ serious themes don’t overshadow the light-hearted tone of a feelgood read which will resonate with any woman who has shrugged off, or longs to shrug off, society’s expectations instead of just
“following the herd”.