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Book: Black Cow by Magdalena Ball

categories: Book, Self-Sufficiency, Contemporary Fiction, Affluenza, Sustainability, Australia, Sydney, Tasmania, Literary Fiction

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Magdalena Ball

about this book: Black Cow is the story of a couple that is caught up in the modern dilemma called "Affluenza". Working continually harder to pay for items they buy to ease the pain of working hard, they inch closer to breaking point as their health and relationships begin to falter, along with the global economy. The couple realises that there has to be a better way to live than constant, increasing consumption, and they sell up and move, with their two children, to a remote farm in Tasmania where they decide to attempt self-sufficiency. The novel explores a subject that is both topical and important, taking the reader on a journey of self-discovery. The issues that the novel explores are ones that are not only close to my own experiences, but ones that are common in our modern world. The title Black Cow not only refers to the Wagyu that James Archer decides to raise, but serve as a metaphor for his lost sense of self, and the earth that the family so desperately wants to reconnect to. Of the novel, Nancy Famolari says: "It could change your life."