Book summary

In Jane Smiley's satirical novel, Moo University, a vast Midwestern aggie school, is populated with schemers, dullards, losers, fornicators, frauds, and the few sensible souls who see through them all--including some very appealing animals. The book is not only a traditional academic comedy, with its bureaucracy, student-teacher interactions, and petty politics (Smiley claims it's based on Iowa State, where she was a teacher for many years), but a sly critique of higher education in America.

Media reviews

"MOO works some wonderfully loose variations upon the Shakespearean comedy to produce an uproariously funny and at the same time hauntingly melancholy portrait of a college community in the Midwest...MOO is not only a delectably entertaining comedy, but also a comedy in the truest Chekhovian sense: sad, resonant, and wise."