Superb ... an unexpected triumph, surely a prize-winner
Richard Benson
Mail on Sunday
I usually view rural Ireland from a train or car window but reading this gripping, fascinating book I felt I was becoming a cattle farmer
Roddy Doyle John Connell's The Cow Book starts well... and gets better. This is an important slice of ... Read moreliving, breathing agricultural history written with absolute honesty by an insider who has the rare quality of being able to see it from the outside too
Rosamund Young A gorgeous read, full of warmth, truth and tentative wonder. John Connell has written "an elegy to the nature I know", but this book is an elegy to so much more - to art and myth and sorrow and longing
Sara Baume This book is a vivid and sharply observed account of a way of life which is almost invisible, a new hidden Ireland. It is also a fascinating portrait of a single sensibility, a born notice, someone on whom nothing is lost, observing birth and death, the landscape and his own heritage
Colm Tóibín In lyrical prose, Connell describes the timeless rhythms of farming, the ancient relationship between man and beast, the fellowship that binds rural communities of Ireland, and the fierce generational struggle between father and son
Jane Shilling
Daily Mail
[A] sweet book . . . a beguiling introduction to aspects of everyday agricultural life
Oldie
Show Less