Moo

Rating:
Summary: I'm Living This Book!
Review: Having spent the past three years enrolled in Management school at Purdue University, I can safely say this: Jane Smiley knows her subject frighteningly well. I found the book a bit difficult to follow in places, but the degree of accuracy more than makes up for this! Anybody who has ever been frustrated with academia (especially at a midwestern land-grant university) will find a few things to chuckle at here. I'd swear that the Econ professor in the book taught one of my classes...

Rating:
Summary: Some Like it Hot, Some Like it Not ...
Review: I am glad I did not buy the hardcover-although this book isn't bad. Ms. Smiley, who also wrote A THOUSAND ACRES (which I did not read or see), writes good characterizations, she knows the art of conversation and description. I just didn't get her story and gave up after 200 pages. MOO takes place on a university campus in the Midwest. It tells of the politics, the sexual antics, the oft-underhanded strategy used to gain endowments, and the puffed-up self-importance of both faculty and students. It is a funny book, I could tell this when reading about the students and their foibles. But the economic humor, of which there was too much, went right past and above me. This gave me a less than enjoyable feeling of being left out of something good.

Rating:
Summary: confusing, too many sub-plots, too many abstract characters
Review: I must agree with [e-mail]-'s comments regarding MOO. I am also in a book club and picked up this book thinking it would be an entertaining change-of-pace book for the club to read. It's awful ! I have gotten to page 280 (only 157 more pages!)and after reading the reviews (amazon.com) have decided not to complete the book. I lived in Davis, Ca. (CAL AGGIES) for three years and my ancestors are all European farmers so I'm not exactly a "city-slicker". This is my first Jane Smiley novel--and probably the last!

Rating:
Summary: How to Read MOO
Review: Having read MOO a while ago, I have only fond memories of a long night spent somewhere between Chuckle and Guffaw. I am dismayed at the poor reviews I read here regarding the confusion caused by the abundance of characters. I was a bit lost at first too, but then I started reading each chapter as if it were its own short story, with an overplot that connects them all -- Sherwood Anderson-style. Spend time with each character and savor the detail -- it will all come together in the end into a satisfying, leave-em-laughing conclusion.

Rating:
Summary: Couldn't plow through it even if I had to.
Review: This is the only book our book group has chosen that I just couldn't even finish. We still laugh at the quotes on the cover and how unbelievable that they could be referring to this story. Maybe if I had finished the whole book, the tangle of characters and plots would have reached some point of clarity but at well over 100 pages into it, Smiley was still adding new people with very uninteresting story lines into what was already a puzzle of characters. I kept flipping to those quotes on the back of the book and the mystery amplified...Did they read this book? Is it a joke like the Emperor's New Clothes? "Fast-paced, Humorous, Engaging" ... I must have read something else!

Rating:
Summary: Not Worth The Effort
Review: Ms. Smiley's unique phraseology is a little disconcerting but I was willing to make the effort to follow along until I became familiar with her rhythm because this is a New York Times bestseller, she is a Pulitzer Prize winning author, and the book promised to be "Delectably Entertaining" and "Uproariously Funny". The story line really wasn't going anywhere when a sex scene between two women popped up and was described in minute detail. I'm not a prude or a homophobe but I found these detailed descriptions unnecessary and offensive. In fact, the whole book, to that point, was unnecessary. I don't know if the story improved after that because I decided it wasn't worth the effort to find out.

Rating:
Summary: Enjoyable overall, but tedious in spots
Review: I enjoyed MOO, mostly because I attended Michigan State University as an undergraduate and saw many familiar "slices of life" in Smiley's tale about the fictional "Moo University." There are A LOT of characters, however, and I found some of the plot lines a lot more interesting than others. I sometimes had to push myself to get through the sections that I didn't find as interesting. Overall, though, a good read and I would recommend it, especially to those in a university setting. You'll definitely find some things to laugh at!

Rating:
Summary: amazing mostly because it is almost true
Review: There is an environmental subtext among the many threads of Jane Smiley's delightful satire of midwestern campus life, _Moo_, which I'm currently devouring. The book is anything but heavy-handed, though the characters mostly are fanatical, each in their own way. Still, at every turn the exagerration is so slight that the whole ridiculous business is entirely believable. It's really a delightful use of the "omniscient" narrative. _Moo_ presents such a plethora of points of view that you can't help disagreeing with it, but unless you've completely lost all vestiges of a sense of humor, you will probably get a kick out of it, expecially if you've ever spent time at a state university. The commentary on the human condition that runs through this book without ever being explicit is a bonus. It's worth pausing to think about how much like real life this farce really is.

Rating:
Summary: After first 50 pages, MOO is a rip-snorting laugh riot.
Review: The first 50 pages introduce so many characters and so many subplots that this reader was almost overwhelmed; but I stuck with it and was rewarded by a laugh-out-loud book. It is possible that the most appreciative audience is filled with people who are familiar with mid-western aggie schools and the vicious politics of academics.

Rating:
Summary: A lot more fun than "A Thousand Acres"
Review: Having taught for a few years in the '70s at a state university, I approached this book with trepidation... even though Smiley teaches at Iowa State. I needn't have hesitated -- it's a hoot and a half! Some of the characters are types (like Bob Carlson and the university president in his mint-green shirts), but no less valid for all that. Others are shrewdly original and it's fascinating to watch them develop -- especially Dr. Lionel Gift, whose approach to economics is Darwinian, and Timothy Monahan, novelist/professor, who struggles with proto-writers during the school year and works the writers' conference circuit in the summer. Chaiman X, the incendiary horticulturalist, is my other favorite; I knew a couple like him. Wait! Can I have more favorites? Like Mrs. Walker, the secret power behind practically everything, and Earl Butz, gourmand extraordinaire and a helluva swell hog, and...

From the other posted reviews, I suspect Big City-types aren't going to entirely understand or appreciate this book, but if you spent any amount of time around a university that had "agricultural" in its name, you really ought to give this one a try.