SOURCE: “A Lively Satire of Derring-Do at Moo U.,” in Christian Science Monitor, Vol. 87, No. 89, April 4, 1995, p. 14.

In the following review, Rubin praises Smiley's ambition in presenting a multitude of characters and subplots in Moo, but complains that she fails to fully develop them.

There's a lot to like about Jane Smiley's latest novel, Moo, starting with a good-natured, clean-living hog named Earl Butz. Earl is the subject of a secret university experiment designed to discover just how large a hog might grow if allowed to keep on eating whatever it wants without paying the usual price of being turned into pork chops before its time.

Bob Carlson, the student assigned to the animal's daily maintenance, is too embarrassed to tell his parents that Earl is probably the closest he's come to making a friend on the Midwestern campus familiarly known as “Moo U.” And, indeed, most of...