Description: 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 audit -- assemble a precarious, quarrelsome team and descend on the farm on a dark spring evening. A series of catastrophes ensues.
Brief description:
Deb Olin Unferth is the author of six books, including Barn 8 and Wait Till You See Me Dance. She has received a Guggenheim
Fellowship and three Pushcart Prizes, and was a National Book Critics Circle Award finalist. Her work has appeared in Granta, Harper's, McSweeney's, and The Paris Review.
Review Quotes:
NAMED A BEST BOOK OF 2020 BY NPR, SLATE, AUSTIN CHRONICLE, AND LITERARY HUB
"Unferth's gift as a short story writer is evidenced in this novel. . . . Within moments of being introduced to [her] characters, we know them intimately, care about them deeply. . . . The thorough research Unferth must have done on the historical, cultural and agricultural aspects of hens and roosters is woven naturally throughout the text, and many of these characters are motivated to take action for the sake of these animals' rights. Barn 8 is a beautiful, urgent, politically charged book with a huge heart, and while the plot is sometimes madcap, well, so is love."--The New York Times Book Review
"Barn 8 is all about anarchy and destruction and chaos and what happens when we . . . do something regardless of the consequences or benefits or potentially catastrophic outcomes. . . . [Barn 8] is the deepest subversion of the heist genre to date."--Colorado Review "It's a tale that's expansive and passionate and absurd and tender."--Austin Chronicle
"[Unferth is] a wildly creative, sharply insightful, and deeply compassionate writer. . . . Throughout, Unferth's characterizations of humans and chickens alike are warm, funny, and provide deep insight into questions around what it means to be a compassionate human in a world terribly out of ethical and environmental balance."--The Brooklyn Rail "[Barn 8 is] a powerful book and a dazzling feat of imagination from one of the country's most exciting authors."--Texas Observer "An adventurous, quirky, yet slyly political novel, Barn 8 defies all expectations. Deb Olin Unferth has been published by the Paris Review and McSweeney's, but this new novel, just released this month, may be her most triumphant work to date."--Austin Monthly "Funny, sassy, smart, and timely, this novel is a sheer joy to read."--Napa Valley Register "[In Barn 8, ] Unferth is tackling, with great wit and technical skill, topics as pressing as Big Agriculture, the humane treatment of animals, and the impossibility of maintaining ideological purity in any social movement. . . . Barn 8 strikes a similar balance between the comic and tragic, the political and the personal as the best of Vonnegut. Readers should find in its zaniness and heart something of a balm during these trying times."--Zyzzyva "The payout is a stunning, stark, and twisted tale that defies the borders of what a heist book or a farm book or even a novel can be."--Cleveland Review of Books "It's rare to find a novel whose plot centers around animal rescue, and rarer still to encounter one that is deftly written. . . . Barn 8 is both a terrific and important book."--EcoLit Books "Ignited by her fiery wit and distinctive voice, Unferth's novel uses one of America's most valuable and overlooked institutions as fertile ground to raise questions around the truths people are fed and the ones they turn a blind eye to. . . . Unferth's writing never feels patronizing--more than anything, it's galvanizing. . . . If this novel isn't a movement, it has enough heart to start one."--Kirkus Reviews, starred review "In this outrageous piece of rural noir and pitch-perfect characterization, Unferth recalls Edward Abbey's The Monkey Wrench Gang with a dose of vegan-minded quirk. This entertaining, satisfying genre turn shows off Unferth's range, and readers will be delighted by the characters' earnest crusade."--Publishers Weekly, starred review "A daring writer of wit, imagination, and conscience, Unferth has transformed her foray into hen hell into an adroitly narrated, fast-paced, yet complexly dimensional novel about emotional and environmental devastation. . . . Unferth sharply illuminates the contrariness of human nature, celebrates the evolutionary marvels of chickens, and exposes the horrors of the egg industry. . . . [A] vividly provoking and revelatory work of ecofiction spiked with mordant humor and powered by love."--Booklist, starred review "While Unferth places the ethical and political implications of industrial agriculture front and center--"these days animal activism was less revolution, more capitalism with a conscience"--the novel is never strident, often hilariously funny, and sympathetic to the earnest loners who would be mocked by a less assured writer."--Shelf Awareness, starred review "Full of grit, humour and tenderness."--Financial Times (UK) "Aesthetically perfect and philosophically profound. . . . The chicken-related writing is a force unto itself."--The Guardian (UK) "Written with vim and wit, Barn 8 is a highly enjoyable treatment of a worthwhile social issue."--The Observer (UK) "[Unferth's] prose is intricate and vibrant. . . . Characters are brightly drawn, dialogue is snappy. [Barn 8] reads like a comi-tragic manifesto of our age."--Irish Times "Barn 8 is a novel like no other: An urgent moral fantasia, a post-human parable, a tender portrait of animal dignity and genius."--Dana Spiotta "Deb Unferth's hilarious, off-kilter genius is on dazzling display in this novel. Come for the brilliant insights about our faltering civilization. Stay for the revolutionaries and the chickens. You are really really going to love these chickens . . ."--Jenny Offill "Like Flannery O'Connor, Deb Olin Unferth does things entirely her own way, and that way is impossible to describe. . . . This very funny and absurd novel is also as serious as the world."--Zachary Lazar "I leap to read anything Deb Olin Unferth writes, and her latest book, Barn 8, is further proof of her singular talent, her gigantic heart. While Unferth's characters try to save hens, her miracle of a novel might, in turn, save you."--R.O. Kwon