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Product Description
Product Description
Brilliantly funny satire set in a contemporary American university.
Deep in the wheatfields of the American midwest, Moo University is in a state of disarray…
In this witty and biting comedy of manners, Jane Smiley turns her wryly perceptive eye towards a community where men and women, the innocent and the cynical, thinkers and careerists, live and work together – in complete disharmony.
‘Satire on a grand scale, a microscopic examination of contemporary American mores conducted with great wit and gracious indulgence for human frailty …Trying to describe this book's marvellous variety is like trying to describe London to someone who has never been there. The only appropriate exhortation is "Read it."'
About the Author
Jane Smiley was born in LA, grew up in St Louis and studied at Vassar and Iowa. She won both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Award in 1992 for ‘A Thousand Acres’.
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Customer Reviews
Set in a fictional Iowa university town, Moo U. is as much fun as a roller-coaster ride and features a cast of characters that are nothing short of hilarious. There is English professor, Tim Monahan, who is perpetually preoccupied with his always-imminent raise and promotion; provost Ivar Harstad, who is coping with the governor's cuts in university funding; and Bo Jones' secret experiment involving a hog named Earl Butz. Really!
And, it only gets better. There is Dr. Lionel Gift who gets hopelessly involved with a Texas billionaire named Arlen Martin. The two cook up a project to mine gold from the world's last virgin rainforest, a project that incurs the wrath Chairman X, a man so caught up in leftist ideology he forgets to marry the mother of his children...for more than twenty years. And best of all, there is Mrs. Walker, the plotting and conniving lesbian secretary to the provost who secretly runs everything at Moo U. with an iron hand.
If it seems like Smiley doesn't write much about education in this book about university life, then that's exactly right, for education has little to do with the day-to-day goings-on at Moo U. Moo U. and its cast of off-beat characters are really a microcosm of America under the Reagan Administration and Moo U. could be any university in the United States.
The only thing wrong with Moo is that, while it is supposed to be satire, it just misses the mark. Don't get me wrong, this is a hilarious book and a hilarious send-up, but I think true satire requires a harder heart than Smiley seems to have. The ending is a bit of a letdown, especially after the rollicking good ride Smiley has taken us on to get us there. Anyone who doesn't mind a bit of a letdown, however, will find Moo an enjoyable and hilarious book that makes fun of just about everything.
There is a richness in Smiley's characterisations that can differentiate at a stroke what life feels like for four different girls sharing a college room - and there is a wide variety of characters - secretaries, serving ladies, new tutors, tenured professors, administrative staff - all given sharp and clear delineation with effortless craft in the writing. The plot is beautifully worked through, with multiple strands - again Smiley makes it seem effortless.
This was Jane Smiley's first book but one would never know it; she has supreme artistry and powers of invention. Moo is a sheer pleasure from start to finish.
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