David Duchovny’s Holy Cow

david duchovny
Actor turned novelist David Duchovny

Holy cow, David Duchovny can write! Yes the actor who put the smoulder in Mulder in the X Files has turned novelist with an udder delight of a book HOLY COW.

Written originally as a screenplay which Pixar turned down – go figure, cows are far cooler than Cars – Dave has taken the bull by the horns and fleshed out the script to novel dimensions.

And novel it is, the tale narrated by a cow, Elsie Bovary. She’s no Flaubert -night creation.

Intended to be a book read to children by adults, HOLY COW is unabashedly full of dad jokes, pungent puns, and literary allusions that span Animal Farm to Charlotte’s Web and back to Babe.

After viewing a televisual trauma on what she calls the God Box and what we humans know as television, Elsie has an epiphany that she can no longer be kept down on the farm after she has seen the grand puree of the abattoir, the wholesale industrial slaughter of her kind.

She decides the only place a she can be reprieved from the plate is India, where cattle are sacred not scared, and obsessively plans her escape from her American pasture.

Elsie is joined by a couple of like-minded beasts – Jerry, a pig, who has converted to Judaism, changed his name to Shalom and is desperate to immigrate to Israel, and Tom, a turkey, who has major misgivings about Thanksgiving and is determined that Turkey is the place to relocate, as the folks aren’t likely to eat their country’s namesake.

These fugitives from the farmyard embark on a globetrotting adventure that takes them all to their preferred destinations, with most astonishing outcomes.

Crammed with cultural references, product placements, poo and penis jokes and a plethora of pun, HOLY COW is a dairy fairy story that verges on a vegetarian manifesto only to be snatched from the jaws of the meatless to become a totally palatable parable about caring for the earth and everyone trying to get along despite differences.

And like all good storybooks, HOLY COW comes with illustrious illustrations by Natalya Balnova.

HOLY COW by David Duchovny is published by Headline hardcover $24.99