I’ve read quite a few books this year, but Libba Bray’s newest is pretty much as good as it gets. Going Bovine is the sad yet hilarious story of Cameron, who is dying of mad cow disease (aka Creutzfeldt Jakob disease, aka bovine spongiform encephalopathy).
The thing is, Libba is one of the world’s funniest people (see her blog, Maureen Johnson’s vlogs with her, etc.), but that didn’t fully shine through in her Gemma Doyle trilogy, which was big on the drama but not quite as big on the absurd.
Bovine is a good old-fashioned road trip story in which the hero must save the world in order to save himself; what makes it unique is that it’s completely insane and will have you snort-laughing for hours. See, this book is about a kid with mad cow disease who meets punk rock angels and giants made of fire and who becomes friends with the world’s most bizarre sidekick — a Hispanic hypochondriac dwarf — not to mention a Norse god disguised as a yard gnome. Oh, and he visits a place called the Church of Everlasting Satisfaction and Snack And Bowl.
Suffice it to say, I have now read Going Bovine twice, and I still think it’s the funniest, smartest, most interesting thing I’ve seen this year. Not to mention the weirdest. If Roald Dahl, Lewis Carroll and Douglas Adams had all collaborated, they still wouldn’t have been able to top Libba’s masterpiece. Go read it now, please.
If you need more convincing, please watch the trailer, in which Libba wears a cow costume and describes her latest work as “the feel-good mad cow disease string theory book of September 2009.”