Don’t say ‘moo cow’

Physician turned Survivor contestant turned soap actor turned health columnist Sean Kenniff tries his hand at fiction with this novella. This parable is the story of an ugly, naive and self-aware bull on a cattle ranch told from the animal’s perspective. He calls himself Être, French for “to be,” and feels intellectually superior to the other cows in his pasture, but struggles to communicate with the cowboys and especially Jacques, the rancher’s young son. Être is convinced that life is better outside of confines of the pasture, but discovers otherwise, the hard way. It’s literally a grass-is-greener-on-the-other-side story, and the ranch, called Gorwell Farms, is both an embarrassing reference to George Orwell, author of the 20th century’s most famous allegory, and allusions to a few graphic and gory slaughter scenes, a.k.a. “the hard way.”