RaveCleveland Review of Books... the steadily rising, impressively credentialed author stares a massive foe in the face and works tirelessly—wit and incisive writing her only weapons—to vanquish it. This foe is a character of the story as much as any other: corporate egg farming. Her dedication to the topic is more than apparent, and her research speaks for itself. Here is an author so committed to her story that she spent hours in coops, listening to chickens, and giving them human voices ... At times, Unferth’s reliance of prophesying can feel heavy-handed, even for a book with animal rights and activism at its core ... when the book dips into bleak, end-of-humanity prophecies, we’re sucked a bit too far away from the hens and farm at the heart of the story. The trick of Unferth’s writing is the sly, almost deceptive nature of it. Portions of text are segmented into bite-size pieces illuminating the goings-on of various characters, an effective device for moving the plot forward while conveying the frenetic and chaotic energy of the characters and the story. You feel jostled about. This is intentional. You are drawn in by a keen feeling of levity, a world of humor surrounding the antics of a chicken-thieving egg auditor and her painfully uncoordinated team. You are hooked by the larger-than-life heist just in time to be caught off guard by the gravity of the facts Unferth laces in. You will learn things in these pages, things you may wish you didn’t know. And that is absolutely the point. The language of Barn 8 is riveting and masterful ... 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.
