Moo

This book will make you happy without lying to you. Behind the skill of its plotting, the range of its topics, the subtlety of the characterization and the felicity of the writing beats a warm heart. From the woman who brought you King Lear transposed to the prairie in A Thousand Acres (and won the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award for it), we now have a playful university-campus novel featuring, among many other things, the Wodehousian touch of a prize pig. Agriculture rouses strong passions at the Midwestern Moo U, as do the machinations of university administrators in their quest for funding; the conflict is local and comic but the issues are global and serious. The cast of the novel encompasses a 1960s radical, a free-market economist, a farmer who wears a bullet-proof vest, a creationist who wants to get married, a Texan billionaire with jug ears and half a dozen students - but you are never in danger of forgetting who anyone is, though you may sometimes be surprised by their sleeping partners. (Kirkus UK)