[To be perfectly honest: I got an ARC of this book in an Early Reviewer give-away at librarything. I don’t think it’s tainted my judgment, though.]

The Snow Cow (subtitled: Ghost Stories for Skiers) is a short story collection by Martin Kochanski.

The thirteen stories are all rather similar in tone – not really scary and, like Kochanski’s writing, trying a little too hard. Some of the stories are a little surreal, but mostly they remain in the traditional confines of the genre. Overall, they’re easy to read and since it’s Kochanski’s first fiction book I can cut him some slack in the cases where the language doesn’t flow perfectly.

Yet I can’t really recommend this book because of two things: One, it annoyed the hell out of me that all the skiing people are basically rich snobs. This is just not true in Austria (and in Switzerland, either, I’m pretty sure) since almost every child learns to ski here. Two (and more importantly) it’s incredibly misogynistic. Almost every woman in these stories is shallow, obsessed with looks and shopping and a little daft. What the hell?

[As usual, after the break, I’ll talk shortly about every story.]

The Snow Cow

A starving cow searches for alternate food sources.
I’m pretty neutral about this story. Language-wise it’s nice, but it never really engaged me.

Predator

A young boy meets a mysterious girl and starts to follow her.
This story has two things I really didn’t like. First, pathetic attempts at text speak, like so:

Me @Furgg Silas were r u spag gets cold

And the other was some sexism thrown into the mix:

There is something about being a man skiing behind a woman, even when you are very young and don’t have much idea of what you’d do if you caught up with her. Following a man, it is permissible to show weakness. You can admit you can’t do things. If that reveals him to be stronger than you, well, it’s the duty of the strong to look after the weak. If the worst comes to the worst, you can sit down and use your phone to ring for the helicopter rescue. But ski behind a woman, and there is no escape. Your genes take over. What she does, you do; and if it ends up killing you – so what? There is nothing sexual about it, she can be your mother or your sister: if the woman leads, you have to follow. It’s built in.

I mean, what the hell? That paragraph is insulting to both men and women. Which is a pity because this story would have been rather nice and chilling otherwise.

Eve

A woman (Eve) and her husband are on a ski honeymoon. Unfortunately, the husband fails to ski as well as he should on the first day, so the wife makes a deal with a strange old man: He reinstates the husband to his former great skier self if she gives him an hour of her time.
This was certainly one of the most memorable of the stories, but Eve absolutely infuriated me. She is the prototype of the ritch ditzy (and I really don’t like to use that word), who marries a black man because it’s something novel and who fears that she has fallen out of love with him, because he doesn’t ski as well as she thought he would.
Also, people, if your ski shoes are too small, you’ll notice right away and you’ll not ski a day in agony…

The Long Man

A strange man is sitting in a bar, waiting for someone, drinking from a bottle with endless supply.
The Long Man is the strongest story of the book and one free of misogyny (since there aren’t any women in it, that’s rather easy). It’s acutally mysterious and chilling. And it has this nice passage:

The rules of the mountain rescue service make no mention of truth. The truth is not for writing down. The truth is for discussing and puzzling over at night over drinks in front of the embers of a dying wood fire.

Even if the story goes on to purport the myth that when someone gets rescued off a mountain, he gets alcohol. Not true. Anyway, not really important either.

Gingerbread

A man makes his way down a mountain at night, when he stumbles upon a small house.
Nice story, but nothing special. Except maybe that it included a woman who wasn’t obsessed with superficialities but with a man instead. Yay.

Miss Poyser

Actually, I have to admit that I don’t really know what this story is about or what exactly’s happening. Therefore I’ll refrain from any more commentary.

Downhill

Three friends, two guys, a woman, meet a guy who takes them for the ski of their lives.
Again, the woman in this story is absolutely obsessed with superficialities. I don’t know what women Kochanski knows or if he knows any, but it seems to be only one he replicates over and over again. Annoying like hell.

Cold Preserves

A cook prepares a special meal for a group of skiers.
Again, a woman who only wants to enjoy herself and make others enjoy themselves, completely obsessed with what people think of her. *grumbles*

Not This Time

A young guy gets on a strange carriage in a train.
I don’t know, I don’t know. The story lacks a certain punch. It’s kind of there without doing much or elliciting any emotion.

Dougie Lewis

A young man looks for a roommate and finds him in Dougie Lewis. Unfortunately Dougie bloody annoys him.
It’s a nice story, but again one that doesn’t really engage.

Dorian Gray

A young woman meets a good-looking guy in an anachronistic ski suit who seems to know things he’s too young to have experienced.
I like retellings, and this one would have been nice if it weren’t for two things: another shallow, daft woman and the endint felt a little bit like a cop-out.

They

A blind woman gets visited by two mysterious children in her home.
Another woman not obsessed with looks and shopping. Yay! But it seriously bothered me that this woman reacts to two ghost children appearing in her home with absolute calm and not with screaming horror.

All Soul’s Day

A man makes an unplanned stop in a small town where he witnesses the All Soul’s Mass.
Nice story, but lacking something. I don’t know exactly, what, I just know it isn’t there.