308 pages
English language
Published Nov. 22, 2001 by Perennial.
The New York Times Book Review called Neal Stephenson's most recent novel "electrifying" and "hilarious"...but if you want to know Stephenson was doing twenty years before he wrote the epic Cryptonomicon, it's back-to-school time. Back to The Big U, that is, a hilarious send-up of American college life starring after years our of print, The Big U is required reading for anyone interested in the early work of this singular writer.
Reasonably fun, surreal take on college life. Clearly an early work. Stephenson doesn't really make the multiple plot threads coherent until the end, and many of the characters are unsatisfying.
