Going Bovine, by Libba Bray

In my last response, I made the mistake of thinking that the genre of fantasy had changed significantly since I was a child. I thought space travel and time warps had gone out of style. After reading Neil Gaiman’s The Graveyard Book, I was actually starting to think that I might like fantasy. I guess I was wrong. Honestly, I don’t know that I’ve ever enjoyed a book less than Going Bovine. I found it to be unbelievable, immature, and simply ridiculous, all in one very long and laborious novel.

I don’t think I would have had a hard time with any of the premises put forward in the book if they hadn’t all seemed so cliché, especially when put together into a complete package. Let’s take a quick look back: mad cow disease, a dwarf best friend, a talking gnome, a beautiful angel girlfriend, virginity lost to a gorgeous cheerleader, time travel, evil geniuses, wormholes, parallel universes, fire giants, reality television, dead musicians come back to life, and ray guns that turn people into snow globes. (My apologies to Libba Bray for the many moments in the book I have failed to mention.) It’s as if Bray took every idea she ever had — every glimpse of a dream, every glimmer of a story, every tidbit of a thought — and put them all together in one book. And, in my opinion, it simply didn’t work.

Furthermore, Bray doesn’t leave us with a message of any substance. 480 pages read, and all I’m left with is another cliché: life is worth living. Maybe if I hadn’t just wasted hours of my life reading a book with such a simple and obvious theme, I would think so. Either that, or I completely missed the real message, in which case I consider the book a failure as well.

The only redeeming element of this book is the tone of voice of the main character, Cameron. I thoroughly enjoyed his sarcasm and wit, and especially his intelligence. I do think his voice lends itself to a much higher-level reader than the students at my school, but I could see it being a very desirable voice for an advanced high school reader. Bray has managed to capture the tone of a typical adolescent, but not dumbed him down enough to bore an intelligent reader.

The most effective use of Cameron’s voice comes in the form of the title chapters, which provide a window into his personality. For example, Bray loads sardonic wit into advanced vocabulary to create “Chapter Two: Wherein the Cruelties of High School are Recounted and the Stoner Dudes of the Fourth-Floor Bathroom Offer Me Subpar Weed and a Physics Lesson” (p. 6).  She could have easily titled this chapter ‘High School Sucks and the Stoners Give me Bad Weed,’ but she instead uses more complex language to clarify that Cameron is not your typical pothead. We understand from the very beginning of the book that Cameron is smarter than most of those around him, which makes us respect him as he begins his journey.

Furthermore, just as Bray creates an intelligent main character, she also treats the reader as intelligent enough to understand Cameron. Often, in young adult fiction, authors use simplified language to make the book appeal to a larger audience; however, Bray does not fall victim to this. While I didn’t appreciate her plot choices, I did admire the fact that she kept the story at a level of complexity that truly taxed the reader to keep up.