Thursday, July 05, 2007

Reading - Cock & Bull

Cock & Bull by Will Self


The first, Cock: A Novelette, concerns Carol, a passive young woman trapped in an unsatisfying marriage, who starts developing a penis. Personality changes soon follow, leading to unpleasant consequences for Dan, her loutish husband.

Bull: A Farce , meanwhile, involves a typical Englishman, archetypally named John Bull, who wakes up one day to discover a "wound" on his leg that turns out be a vagina. The doctor who examines him develops a more-than-professional interest in his new genitalia, and the two begin a confused affair.

While gender complications play an obvious role in these satiric tales, Self's real target is "the horror that shadows each and every aspect of the ordinary."

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