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Summary and Reviews of Barn 8 by Deb Olin Unferth

Barn 8 by Deb Olin Unferth

Barn 8

by Deb Olin Unferth
  • BookBrowse Review:
  • Critics' Consensus (8):
  • First Published:
  • Mar 3, 2020, 256 pages
  • Paperback:
  • Mar 2020, 256 pages
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About This Book

Book Summary

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.

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Reviews

BookBrowse Review

BookBrowse

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)

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(Reviewed by Lisa Butts).

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Beyond the Book



Are Chickens Smart?

Brown hen in chicken yard 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 ...

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Read-Alikes

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