To answer my titular question it's Moo, by Jane Smiley. I like it, with its setting geographically removed enough from my own midwest-college-town so that I don't feel like the author is making fun of me and my neighbors specifically :)
Once I've finished Moo, I won't read more of Smiley's work right away. She's good - especially at character development, and she offers up lots of characters! - but her sentences run on a bit and her plots move too slowly for my liking. I find it's too easy to put down the book, and when I do, I'm less than eager to pick it up again.
Something I picked up when I put down Moo was a Discover Magazine article about several researchers who have apparently proven that Campbells monkeys (and many other species) have syntax. (Speaking of run on sentences!)
So maybe worrying about grammar isn't uniquely human after all.
