Of course the context of the killing is quite different. However, being native to a place where it is routine for people to go hunting and kill animals for food makes it quite strange to read a character who believes his killing of animals for food (as a job in a slaughterhouse) is a crime that makes him a murderer, but even more importantly than that, it is something that damns his eternal soul. And even more strange than that: he believes this while casually killing other humans without any such self-condemnation. I’m not able to make this make any sense in terms of a character who is apparently supposed to have a strong religious faith. Heterodox would be putting it much too mildly!

I’d thought this novella would be a critique of the modern industrial-style slaughterhouse method of taking animals from farm to table, which, quite fair, but this seems clear that it is the taking of an animal’s life for food regardless of circumstance that is both a crime and a deadly sin.

So, okay, can’t think much of that. What else is there, there’s the terse direct prose, which is pretty good though sometimes quite awkward, can’t be sure if due to the translation or the original. There was a scene involving the mixing up of Lebanese and Israeli cows, funny at first, but by the time our protagonist marked out the self-segregating Israeli cows with yellow paint, er, not sure about that, and haven’t found any interviewer asking the author what she was going for.

There was a cringe moment when a visiting college student confronts our slaughterhouse worker and asks how he could do what he does, he asks her if she eats hamburgers, and she starts sobbing. Yikes.

I did quite like the rhetorical echoes of a repeated line from the much more enjoyable book [b:Piranesi|50202953|Piranesi|Susanna Clarke|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1609095173l/50202953._SY75_.jpg|73586702], echoes only in the sense that I read Piranesi first, since this novella was published in Brazil years earlier:

Piranesi: “The Beauty of the House is immeasurable; its kindness infinite.”

Of Cattle and Men: “He walks through the door and gets back to work, for the line is long and the work, never ending.”

Of Cattle and Men: “The figures, the voids, long shadows, all of it brought on by the night, which is immense, and its reaches infinite.”

Maybe a bit of a stretch? ( )