Book Reviews
Delectably entertaining.... An uproariously funny and at the same time hauntingly melancholy portrait of a college community in the Midwest.
The New York Times
Smart, irreverent, and wickedly tender.... Moo suggests a mix of Tom Wolfe's wit and John Updike's satiny reach.
The Boston Globe
Displays a wicked wit and an unerring eye for American foibles.... Stuffed with memorable characters, sparkling with deliciously acid humor, Moo is a rare bird in today'sliterary menagerie: a great read that also makes you think.
The Chicago Sun-Times
In Smiley's world, people are sometimes greedy, foolish, and muddleheaded, but they are most often triumphant.
BookList
Effortlessly switching gears after the Pulitzer Prize-winning A Thousand Acres, Smiley delivers a surprising tour de force, a satire of university life that leaves no aspect of contemporary academia unscathed. The setting is a large midwestern agricultural college known as Moo U., whose faculty and students Smiley depicts with sophisticated humor, turning a gimlet eye on the hypocrisy, egomania, prejudice and self-delusion that flourish on campus—and also reflect society at large. Everybody at Moo U. has an agenda: academic, sexual, social, economic, political and philosophical. Among the more egregious types that Smiley portrays are Dr. Lionel Gift, an intellectual whore who calls students "customers" and is willing to skew research to further his name and line his pocketbook; Dr. Bo Jones, who is conducting a secret experiment on an appealing boar named Earl Butz (Earl and the horses on campus are nicer than the humans by a mile); and a superlatively bossy secretary who is a lot smarter than the Ph.Ds she serves. A chapter titled "Who's in Bed With Whom" clears things up in that department—but only temporarily, since musical beds is a continuous game. A quartet of women roommates who all hide secrets from each other, an unscrupulous "little Texan with jug ears" who wants to give the college tainted money, and a stuffy dean who thinks that anything he desires is God's will are some of the large cast of characters that Smiley manipulates with remarkable ease—and though some portrayals verge on caricature, she never goes over the line. Details of midwest topography, weather and culture are rendered with unerring authenticity. The narrative sails along with unflagging vigor and cleverness, and even the ironic denouement has an inevitability that Smiley orchestrates with hilarious wit.
Publishers Weekly
Smiley, now acclaimed for her portrayals of the dark side of America's pastoral ideal (a Pulitzer for A Thousand Acres, plus her wonderful novellas, Ordinary Love and Good Will), returns with a sharp-edged spoof of academic life. "Moo U" is a large, Midwestern "ag and tech" school where campus politics and intrigue rule. Smiley has assembled a large, colorful group of characters who will be familiar to ivory tower dwellers: the campus secretary who controls personnel and paper flow, the faculty who plot for power and revenge, plus the dining hall worker, the students, and the administrators, all with their own agendas. While entertaining and on-target as parody, Moo is not as riveting as Smiley's best work. This should do well and be very popular with higher education insiders. —Ann H. Fisher, Radford P.L., Va.
Library Journal<