☀ You can borrow and read Moo free below. ☀
Jane Smiley is a wonderful writer, and Moo is a wonderful book. It’s set in the U.S. Midwest at a big state university , called Moo U because of its focus on agriculture, and told from the points of view of some fascinating characters. This excerpt from the jacket blurb gives you a good idea of what to expect.
Smiley’s tone is so cool that laughter comes without warning as she lightly balances a cosmic cast (everybody in bed with somebody in the romantic or French-farcial or Washington, D.C., sense) that includes top-salaried Dr. Lionel Gift, poet laureate of consumerism, who refers to the students as customers . . . Chairman X of the horticulture department, who is so pure and classical a leftist that it hasn’t occurred to him to marry his wife of twenty years . . . the power behind all thrones: the dean’s middle-aged secretary, Mrs. Walker, who knows more than J. Edgar Hoover ever knew about one and all . . . the small, folksy, jug-eared Texas billionaire who’s tempting hungry Moo U with funds for his own mysterious agenda. And, at the secret heart of the campus, an unauthorized experimental project involving an (increasingly) large and touching creature who is a living symbol of unleashed desire and consumption.
That would be Earl Butz, a pig. Other characters include four roommates in a campus diversity house, some of their parents, various male students trying to figure out women and life, an English professor on the tenure committee, her ex-lover, who is a self-involved associate English professor seeking tenure, a university development officer doing what it takes to raise money, a Latina associate professor of foreign languages who has just relocated from Los Angeles, an elderly farmer-inventor, and more than a dozen more. Each person is brilliantly observed and communicated to the reader.
Smiley weaves all the plot lines together masterfully. The book is like a symphony, except it’s also funny. Gorgeous and thoroughly enjoyable.
borrow or buy Moo
You can borrow and read the ebook Moo free via the nonprofit Internet Archive (read online or download pdf online) or buy* it from Amazon.
more books by Jane Smiley you can borrow for free
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