-
Access Our
Best Book Club
Books of 2025!
Summary | Excerpt | Reviews | Beyond the book | Read-Alikes | Genres & Themes | Author Bio
Book Reviewed by:An unforgettably exuberant and potent novel by a writer at the height of her powers.
Two auditors for the U.S. egg industry go rogue and conceive a plot to steal a million chickens in the middle of the night―an entire egg farm's worth of animals. Janey and Cleveland―a spirited former runaway and the officious head of audits―assemble a precarious, quarrelsome team and descend on the farm on a dark spring evening. A series of catastrophes ensues.
Deb Olin Unferth's wildly inventive novel is a heist story of a very unusual sort. Swirling with a rich array of voices, Barn 8 takes readers into the minds of these renegades: a farmer's daughter, a former director of undercover investigations, hundreds of activists, a forest ranger who suddenly comes upon forty thousand hens, and a security guard who is left on an empty farm for years. There are glimpses twenty thousand years into the future to see what chickens might evolve into on our contaminated planet. We hear what hens think happens when they die. In the end the cracked hearts of these indelible characters, their earnest efforts to heal themselves, and their radical actions will lead them to ruin or revelation.
Funny, whimsical, philosophical, and heartbreaking, Barn 8 ultimately asks: What constitutes meaningful action in a world so in need of change? Unferth comes at this question with striking ingenuity, razor-sharp wit, and ferocious passion. Barn 8 is a rare comic-political drama, a tour de force for our time.
While the characters of Barn 8 are exceedingly compelling, the novel is fundamentally an ode to the humble chicken and a critique of factory farming wrapped up in a darkly comical heist plot. The subject of animal rights is addressed with urgency and passion, but the book succeeds because of Deb Olin Unferth's light touch...continued
Full Review
(733 words)
This review is available to non-members for a limited time. For full access,
become a member today.
(Reviewed by Lisa Butts).
Barn 8 recounts the formulation and execution of a plan to rescue (or, depending on your viewpoint, steal) nearly one million hens from an egg farm. Interspersed with the plot are ruminations on the lives, personalities, evolution and intelligence of these animals that the author obviously regards highly. So, how smart are chickens?
A surprising number of studies have been conducted on this subject. According to an experiment done by researchers at the University of Padova in Italy, young chicks can understand numerical values well enough to conduct a semblance of basic arithmetic. Perhaps you've heard of the Stanford Marshmallow Experiment, in which children were given the option to have one marshmallow immediately or delay ...
This "beyond the book" feature is available to non-members for a limited time. Join today for full access.
If you liked Barn 8, try these:
by Jennine Capó Crucet
Published 2025
Scarface meets Moby Dick in this groundbreaking, darkly comic novel about a young man's attempt to capitalize on his mother's murky legacy—a story steeped in Miami's marvelous and sinister magic.
by Annie Hartnett
Published 2023
A lost young woman returns to small-town New Hampshire under the strangest of circumstances in this one-of-a-kind novel of life, death, and whatever comes after from the acclaimed author of Rabbit Cake.
.gif)
A few books well chosen, and well made use of, will be more profitable than a great confused Alexandrian library.
Click Here to find out who said this, as well as discovering other famous literary quotes!
Dana Spiotta
Barn 8 is a novel like no other: An urgent moral fantasia, a post-human parable, a tender portrait of animal dignity and genius.
