Barn 8

by Deb Olin Unferth

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.

Genres: Fiction, Humor, Book Club, Animals, Contemporary, Audiobook, Novels

8 pages, Audiobook

First published March 3, 2020

About the author

Deb Olin Unferth is the author of six books, including the novel Barn 8 and the story collection Wait Till You See Me Dance. Her work has appeared in Harper’s, The Paris Review, Granta, Vice, NOON, the New York Times, and McSweeney’s. She has received a Guggenheim fellowship, a Creative Capital grant, three Pushcart Prizes, and was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. An associate professor at the University of Texas in Austin, she also runs the Pen City Writers, a creative writing program at a penitentiary in southern Texas.

Reviews

[Roxane · Rating 3 out of 5]

Imaginative. Ambitious. I love the interplay of genres here, how it starts off as one thing and then becomes another and then another. Pacing was off at times. And sometimes the characters felt indistinct. Still, a good novel.

[Pari · Rating 1 out of 5]

I was so excited to read this one - a book about rogue Ag workers who liberate hundreds of thousands of chickens from a hen farm. The topic felt unique and juicy. I was so excited to get to know the characters, the decisions that led them to change course, from working for Big Ag to working against it.

Maybe I built it up too much. My expectations were high, and Barn 8 floundered under them. There are a lot of pages of chicken shit - literal chicken shit. So, it feels like at least Unferth did her research.

But the trajectory of the characters - who they are, what makes them tick, what inspires their decisions - that’s all left out and the result is an apathetic experience. The characters. The chickens. The heist. The novel. Who cares? It's all chicken shit.

If you find yourself with some extra time on your hands….this one is still a pass, my friends. Go read We Ride Upon Sticks by Quan Barry instead.

[Neil · Rating 3 out of 5]

Looking back on Barn 8 as I finished it, I felt almost as if I had read parts of two different books. That’s an exaggeration, because there are clear links through the whole book, but let me explain. As the book opens, we travel with Janey to meet her father for the first time. All through her childhood, her mother has told her she was conceived with the help of a sperm bank, but suddenly she learns that isn’t true and the sperm donor lives in Iowa and provided his donation by the traditional method. She travels to meet him and decides to stay. It’s complicated. In a similar, but less detailed, way, we meet several other characters, notably Cleveland who used to be babysat by Janey’s mother but now works at an egg farm.

Once we have met all these characters and established their backstories to one degree or another, we cut loose from all of that and run with a madcap heist where Janey and Cleveland decided to remove almost 1 million chickens from an egg farm as a sort of statement. The majority of the book is this heist and its consequences.

Throughout the book, more and more towards the end, chronology is abandoned and the story skips backwards and forwards in time so we are often reading things knowing how they will pan out. Unfortunately, for this reader, at least, this does have the effect of removing tension from the story. When the heist does, inevitably, go wrong, you are reading about it knowing exactly where it is heading.

At times, the book is completely bonkers. Who in their right mind would think of stealing almost a million chickens? At times it is political/ethical as it asks questions about the egg farming business in America that have wider implications. It seems clever and worthy: I just wish it had been a bit more exciting to read.

[Judy · Rating 5 out of 5]

My goodness, this crazy novel was so good. Janey, a teenager from Brooklyn, runs away to find the father she has just found out she has. She ends up in Ohio where she falls in with some eco terrorist folks.

They plot the heist of a million chickens, which are from just one agribusiness farm of egg laying chickens. What you learn about how these chickens are treated is almost enough to turn you vegan if your are not already. The author IS vegan. She must have gone through some trauma herself in doing the research.

Of course the heist goes very wrong but you will have to read the book to find out how it all turns out. Deb Olin Unferth is a fearless writer with a seriously whacked sense of humor and a lot of heart. The characters jump off the page and Janey won my admiration as she came to terms with who she is and what life means. Even the chickens became characters.

I am an omnivore and will remain so, but I am looking more deeply into where my supposedly "cage free" eggs actually come from.

I received the book as the March selection of the Nervous Breakdown Book Club, a subscription that continues to introduce me to great books and authors who deserve more attention. I listened to the talk with Deb Olin Unferth on the Otherppl podcast and got more insight into the vegetarian lifestyle and views.

[Skip · Rating 1 out of 5]

The NY Times Book Review made this book sound controversial and interesting. It wasn't. Not at all. Flat characters, slow, and we knew the motivations of perhaps one of them. I am in complete agreement with Pari's review , who must be a big fan of American Graffiti: https://getyarn.io/yarn-clip/6cac9bde...

[Viv JM · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 stars, rounded up for the brilliant epilogue

Barn 8 is a heist story with a difference - the plot being to liberate an entire industrial unit's worth of hens and comparisons made to The Monkey Wrench Gang made me think it would be right up my street. Initially, however, I was unmoved. At the halfway mark I thought it was OK, it rollicked along well enough but I felt no connection with the characters and I wasn't sure if I would continue. Once we got to the heist itself, I definitely enjoyed it a lot more and felt more invested, however I still felt little connection to the main characters, not really knowing what their motivations were for wanting to pull off this audacious heist. The highlights really, for me, were the incidental characters describing the aftermath - I especially liked Bonnie K, the disaffected park ranger. Oh, and I absolutely LOVED the epilogue which made me forgive the disappointment of the first half altogether!

Not quite the "unforgettably exuberant and potent novel" promised in the blurb, but a fun read nevertheless.

[Brendan Monroe · Rating 1 out of 5]

It's rare that any work of fiction, be it novel or film, TV series or serialized romance, can be dubbed "bad," as such a label is almost always subjective. There are times, however, when the word "bad" can be more generally applied. When we're talking about spoiled meat, for example, or the new novel by Deb Olin Unferth, "Barn 8."

Yes, my friends. Rest assured that this is a bad novel. The kind of novel that threatens to destroy the joy one finds in reading, that makes you turn away from the stack of books on your nightstand, feigning sleep even when not tired.

One day, as children, my sister and I were making eggs. She cracked her egg against the pan and, instead of the familiar yellow yoke, out came blood and fragments of baby chick.

My sister wouldn't eat eggs for years after that.

It was only last year, when visiting her and her husband in Denver, that I realized she'd gone back to eating eggs. We were having brunch at a local restaurant and I noticed she was munching avocado toast with a poached egg on top. "You're eating eggs again?" I asked. "I started eating them again last year," she replied. "Now I love them."

This after going more than 20 years without.

Fortunately, I have a stronger constitution, so reading "Barn 8" hasn't led to a similar revulsion, in this case for all things written.

But it could, which is why I'm writing this as something of a public service announcement, an important disclaimer. Do NOT read this yourself, and most certainly do not give this to your kids to read, as they'll become one of those philistines incapable of sitting down and watching "Parasite" for hatred of subtitles.

To put it more bluntly, if stranded on a desert island with only this book, do not waste time putting it to immediate use in building a fire.

Bizarrely, it all actually started out well enough.

Janey, a 15-year-old girl in New York City, discovers that her mother has been keeping her father's identity a secret from her, so she promptly flies out to Iowa to spend some time with her newly realized father, only to discover that they have absolutely nothing in common — he does live in Iowa, after all — and she's all geared up to go back home except that then her mother, who Janey's refused to talk to ever since finding out she had a father, gets killed in a car accident, and as she has no other family, Janey is then stuck with dear old dad, both of whom hate this new arrangement and live in a state of shared hostility over the next several years. I actually enjoyed this, it felt different, such unhappy characters, such unhappy events, and all this, mind you, in the first 30 pages!

But then things get very strange, and "Barn 8" suddenly morphs from somewhat intriguing family drama into a ridiculously goofy heist-thing that feels like it was written in a collaborative hodgepodge by the children of PETA activists. Think "Ocean's Eleven" with chickens. Except it's more like "Ocean's 422" because the number of characters who are introduced over like three pages (basically one new character per line) is head-scratching in its rationale — and there's no Brad Pitt or George Clooney among them.

Why are we being introduced to characters we're not going to hear of again? Other than Janey, every character here is about as developed as any of the 900 odd-thousand chickens they "rescue" from the barn, except the one that goes "bwaaak" because that one is comparatively developed enough to be played by Daniel Day-Lewis in the film version.

I cannot emphasize enough how jarring the shift in tone between these two parts is. If it weren't for the main character's name staying the same, you would think that someone had ripped the first 30 pages off one book, and pasted 220 pages from some other, truly horrible thing, on top of it. It's got a sort of If on a Winter's Night a Traveler thing about it, except that it's as horrible as that Italo Calvino treasure is good.

If anyone says they liked this book, what they mean is that they liked the message, which is that factory farming and the battery farms they stick hundreds of thousands of chickens into are bad. You won't hear me arguing otherwise.

The problem is that "Barn 8" doesn't just do books a disservice, it does important issues like animal rights and sustainable agriculture a disservice as well. In this case, it isn't the message that should be shot down, it's the messenger.

[Emmeline · Rating 4 out of 5]

Stylish, ambitious, eggcentric.

[Amy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Halfway through, I thought this would end up a 5-star read, but towards the end some of the momentum was lost, and new characters were introduced that bogged things down. Still, a really interesting read overall.

[Uriel Perez · Rating 5 out of 5]

The alarming decline of Western Civilization serves as the punchline to Deb Olin Unferth's apocalyptic and big-hearted new novel, BARN 8.

It’s the end of the world as we know it, but there’s still a few optimistic hangers-on that believe we’ll pull through. Take several hundred rag-tag ex-eco activists, a million incarcerated hens being groomed for future work as nuggets and tenders, and one ingenious plan to bust them out and you have the groundwork for this novel that, for all the gloom and doom it forsees, speaks to the unmatched spirit of what people with a common cause can achieve.

With temperatures rising and democracies ripping themselves to shreds, BARN 8 may be the only hope we have left. Unferth fearlessly treads the shaky ground she writes on and delivers her latest masterpiece here.

[Kate Savage · Rating 5 out of 5]

Oh these creatures, the hens. Three of them live on this scrap of land, and I would put down this book to go outside and stand with them. Try to join their conversations, parse out their songs, scratch in the dirt beside them. The beautiful, curious, strong little beings. "T-rex's pretty little niece," writes Unferth.

Unferth writes about humans who factory-farm hens and humans who try to liberate them. But that all just feels like scaffolding for the real story, which is the birds themselves, as beings with their own perspectives. Every time I picked up this book I found myself weeping. Yes, for the sheer scale and horror of egg farming. But also for the beauty and wonder of these creatures, these animals who are considered the most bland, boring, common in the bestiary.

Deb Olin Unferth is an anagram of The Fun Lone Bird. So we're onto you 'Deb' -- or should I say 'Bwaaukk'?

[Tao · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Far above the shit, in the shifting sky, the stars were the only objects humans could see and not destroy."

[Come Musica · Rating 3 out of 5]

Chiudete gli occhi e provate ad immaginare novecentomila galline.
Un numero enorme. Provate a immaginarle stipate, una accanto all'altra, in un grande capannone.

E in uno di questi capannoni, in Iowa, si ritrova catapultata Janey, una quindicenne cresciuta a New York dalla madre, che non ha mai conosciuto il padre e che da un giorno all'altro decide di volerlo conoscere: allora la nuova Janey dice addio alla vecchia Janey e dà una brusca direzione alla sua vita.
Da New York si avventura in Iowa per conoscere il padre.
Cosa sarebbe successo se non avesse preso quella decisione? L'incontro con il padre però non si rivela temporaneo. La vita di Janey è di nuovo scossa da un altro evento e quella che era il suo punto fisso, sua madre, ad un certo punto non ci sarà più.
In un rincorrersi rocambolesco degli eventi ecco che Janey si ritrova a fare l'ispettrice negli allevamenti di galline ovaiole: che razza di lavoro è?

“Janey tirò fuori l’opuscolo e lesse ad alta voce, «un’ispettrice negli allevamenti di galline ovaiole? Che poi che cazzo di lavoro è?»
A volte, come in quel momento, Janey immaginava la Janey morta, quella rimasta «tragicamente» uccisa nell’incidente insieme alla madre. La immaginava mentre aleggiava sopra di loro osservandole entrambe: la Janey non morta a New York e la Janey non morta in Iowa. Su, in cielo, la Janey morta era una specie di super-Janey, tanto che adesso, mentre in Iowa la nuova Janey diceva «ispettrice», una parola che la vecchia Janey avrebbe avuto poche occasioni di pronunciare, la super-Janey poteva leggerle nella mente, vedere che i suoi pensieri si erano fermati di colpo cinque secondi prima, quando il padre aveva pronunciato la parola madre. La super-Janey poteva vedere la parola madre impressa nel cervello della nuova Janey come un marchio a fuoco. E magari la super-Janey poteva vedere la vecchia Janey a New York, e chissà, forse in quel momento aveva anche lei in testa la parola madre, per esempio perché sua madre (la loro madre) era appena entrata dalla porta e si stava togliendo l’impermeabile e si lanciava in un racconto, e la vecchia Janey la guardava, ridendo. Per un attimo la nuova Janey si chiese se anche la sovrapposizione dei pensieri contava, se la super-Janey poteva rilevare anche un legame così tenue, insieme forte e fragile come una ragnatela, il pensiero più elementare, probabilmente il primo pensiero del neonato quando ancora non è in grado di nominarlo: madre.”

Janey conosce Cleveland, che è legata alla madre di Janey, Olivia, che le aveva fatto da babysitter quando era piccola. Cleveland è un'ispettrice, un'addetta cioè per la sicurezza del consumatore e il benessere delle galline.

Janey, Cleveland, Annebelle, Dill mettono in atto un piano pazzesco: liberare tutte le novecentomila galline.
Un romanzo ambientalista che denuncia la "cattiveria" degli uomini che non rispettano la natura e che sottopongono gli animali a condizioni di nonvita per intensificare gli allevamenti e produrre, produrre, produrre.
Un romanzo visionario che immagina un mondo in cui questi allevamenti intensivi possano finalmente avere fine:

“Ma le future galline non saranno sole. Gli uomini cattivi saranno scomparsi una volta per tutte, e i polli non svilupperanno mai le mani, non raggiungeranno mai altezze tali da rendere possibile la distruzione di massa. Prenderanno solo quello di cui avranno bisogno. Scorrazzeranno sulla terra, mangeranno l’erba e gli insetti superstiti, risanati e rinforzati. Vivranno.”

Tra 3 e 4 stelle.

[Ilana (illi69) · Rating 4 out of 5]

A young woman with few career options is taken under the wing of and old friend of her deceased mother, who is an inspector at poultry farms, but also an animal rights activist operating with her own moral code. Initially, they save a few chickens from the inhumane large scale farms they oversee, with chickens packed into cages and all the distress we've come to learn about the living conditions of these animals. They form a plan to steal over a million chickens from a poultry farm and to mount such a huge coup, must enrol other animal activists who have been operating illegally to expose the terrible practices poultry farmers use to make ends meet. The heist itself is a fiasco, but the telling of it is engaging and in the end... no spoilers here, but the chickens get poetic justice of sorts. I haven't looked up Unferth's biography, but I assume she is a vegan and wanting to expose the evils of the meat, egg and dairy industries in a way that entertains instead of preaching. I grew up vegetarian but am an omnivore now and minimize animal products in my diet, and didn't feel the usual oppressive judgment that often comes through when vegans make a cause for a meat & dairy-free world. An original take on a subject we all need to stay conscious about to help alleviate & hopefully one day eliminate animal suffering.

[Phyllis · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a difficult book for me to review. I'm glad I read it, though it felt to me like a very long, slow but steady, march of the chickens. This may not be the fault of the book, as I read it during the week of the homicidal acts of police and resulting protests, all falling on top of the dreaded virus and the world trying to reopen in the midst of that ongoing danger -- so gee whiz, what chance does a book have against all that.

I did learn much more about the regal chicken than I would ever have imagined learning from a novel. Now I kind of love them.

[Saimon (ZanyAnomaly) · Rating 4 out of 5]

Barn 8 was fun to read - it has an absurd writing, a bonkers storyline, while also simultaneously asking some important ethical questions. I feel like it missed SOMETHING to give it that five star ⚡zhuzh⚡, but it was a good read, with a right balance of emotional depth and humor.
If you liked Anxious People, give this book a try.

[Angie Miles · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read this super fast and it was fun to read, but it wasn’t really anything special hence the 3 stars.

[Matthew · Rating 3 out of 5]

There's a lot to admire about this book. The writing is strong, Unferth builds some compelling characters, and there are a lot of different genres mixed together in a fun, zany blend.

On the other hand, the way the novel is constructed led to some breaks in dramatic tension that a heist novel cannot afford, even if the plot involves the theft of a million chickens from an industrial egg farm. The narration kept leaping forward and backward in time while often giving away early on what ultimately happens to various characters by the end of the book.

All in all this was still an enjoyable and unique read.

[Suzanne · Rating 5 out of 5]

If I was amused by this book, it’s not because I was callous about the plight of the chickens, it’s just that I found the antics of the humans so entertaining. I kept thinking of Tom Robbins’ novels throughout, not that this had as many fantastical elements as some of his books do. But there was some sort of link here to the spirit of iconoclasm and rebelliousness characteristic of the 1960s and ‘70s: sincerely-held beliefs lead to wacky plans taken to extremes, while silliness ensues.

When a ragtag crew of several hundred animal activists conspire to steal 900,000 chickens, things are bound to get weird.

[Paolo Latini · Rating 3 out of 5]

Non così “esteticamente perfetto” o “filosoficamente profondo” come strilla il Guardian, ma grazioso e acuto sì, il che basta a rendere questo “Capannone n. 8” un libro più che apprezzabile. Per raggiungere la perfezione estetica sarebbero serviti personaggi più complessi e una trama meno farraginosa, per la profonditi filosofica sarebbe stata necessaria una maggiore compenetrazione tra trama e questioni antropologiche e naturalistiche. Unferth sembra abbia voluto sacrificare un po’ di verticalità a favore di una maggior fruibilità, il che può anche andar bene.

[J.A.]

The way in which socio-political meets humor meets action meets inventive delivery here is a feat. Unferth has done something truly laudable and remarkable with this novel.

Interview at Ploughshares:

http://blog.pshares.org/index.php/i-t...

[Lacy · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was fun! Great characters. Loved the way the story unfolded. Will look out for other works by the author.

[Caitlin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Hen’s Weekly calls Barn 8 “a damn bawk book”

I will admit, the premise sounds laughable, and the beginning starts slow. But something about this book draws you in and refuses to let you go

It’s snarky and witty yet somber and serious. The story is absurd and ridiculous yet true and telling. The writing is simple yet catchy, leaving you wanting more even though it doesn’t seem like much. Half of the cast consists of animals we primarily think of as sandwich filler yet Unferth gives them so much depth that they can symbolize just as well as any human.

There is no way, really, to describe the essence of Barn 8. You just need to experience it for yourself.

Also it made me feel a bit bad for not being vegan/vegetarian. Not in a preachy way—it just gives a lot of insight into the workings of chickens. However, I also have a lot of insight into my stomach, which tells me that no novel about a chicken rebellion will make me stop shoving chicken thighs in my mouth every week.

Anyway, just read this. I promise you that it is unlike anything you have ever read

[Wilma (Enby Reads) · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of my new favorite books! Highly highly recommend it!

[Sammy Kutsch · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was not at all what I was expecting but it was fascinating. I appreciated the real depth to the story and different actors, while having a freedom to have small tangents and side notes that only added to the feeling of the book. This book was really dynamic in its writing and truly in different category to most other books I’ve read. Wild from start to finish

[Fanna]

March 2, 2020: No idea why they don't have an audiobook edition listed on here but I'm still excited to listen to this unusual heist story, and what's not to be happy about comedy meeting politics? Thank you, LibroFM and Recorded Books for the advanced listening copy!

[Emma · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a wacky, imaginative and brilliant novel. I loved anything to do with the lives of chickens (who knew? So complex!). I loved the characters. I loved the writing. This book draws you in immediately with the story of Janey, her estranged Father and the Mother that raised her. We meet Janey on a bus on the way to Ohio to meet said Father for the first time. What ensues is a comic caper with vegan overtones. This book seamlessly (and at times hilariously) skewers the American egg industry via the lens of Janey's adolescent dissatisfaction. It occasionally veers into preachiness, yes. The line about dogs near the end of the book (something to do with them being sad when we leave them to go to the cinema, not because they are lonely without us, but because they were torn from their pack hundreds of years ago) was a little hard to swallow and eyeroll-ey. Also, it seems unrealistic that a wild flock of chickens could be introduced to multiple cocks, surely the latter would kill each other. Suffice it to say that the idealism was a little much in parts. However, this book is worth the occasional exaggeration and for the most part, meat eater or not, who wants battery farmed chickens? Not me. They're disgusting and abhorrent and Olin Unferth does an excellent job of opening the readers eyes to that within the context of a fascinating and beautifully told story.

On a superficial note - the cover of this book is lovely and what initially drew me in (in addition to the raves from critics).

On a note of interest, I joined the GrayWolf Galley Club after reading this book! Would definitely recommend people check out this super cool press and consider joining if you enjoy getting pre-publication books and tote bags in the post.

[Robert Sheard · Rating 4 out of 5]

Barn 8 is the story of a young woman in New York who, on her 15th birthday, learns that her father wasn't a sperm bank donor, but rather an Iowan man working in "ag." Janey runs away to Iowa to meet him, and despite that being a disaster, she gets stuck there.

The rest of the book is Janey getting pulled into the world of commercial layer-hens and egg production, first as an auditor, but then as an underground organizer of the greatest animal heist ever.

At times a little too much like an essay, it's no surprise to learn that some of the content in the novel did grow out of an essay and is as much of a call to action as it is a novel. Nevertheless, it's a fast-paced read, at times funny, at other times horrifying. Think of Upton Sinclair's The Jungle, but with chickens.

[Erin · Rating 4 out of 5]

The main highlight of this book is its premise. A troop of do-gooders seek to save 100's of thousands of hens from dire barn conditions and relocate them to better homes. The heist parallels the protagonist Jane's desire to find the new Jane and leave the old Jane back in the city. However, it was hard to relate to Jane. I would have liked to have seen more character development.

The heist leads to an exemplary conclusion.

The first thing I did after reading this book was eat an egg sandwich--free range, cage free of course.

WARNING: This novel may change the way you feel about chickens and consuming them.

[Kyle · Rating 5 out of 5]

"But nobody likes chickens! Nobody cares about chickens! Once I found myself sitting on a plane next to this somewhat famous journalist. I told her about the book and she said, 'But why would I care about chickens? You should at least do turkeys, people care a little about turkeys.' I thought, jeez, maybe I should change it to turkeys."

The rest of my interview with Deb Olin Unferth on the Chicago Review of Books! https://chireviewofbooks.com/2020/03/...