Slaughterhouse Five

Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

My review

rating: 3 of 5 stars
Although it had a lot of interesting aspects to it, the book overall left me flat.

Vonnegut tries to relate his experience of surviving the bombing of Dresden during World War II. He uses the character of Billy Pilgrim as a sort of surrogate, while still interjecting his voice as author from time to time throughout the book.

Billy has become "unstuck" in time, and he flashes forward and backwards through time to different experiences in his life, including a period where he was abducted by aliens to live in a zoo on their planet.

I liked the jumping around of the narrative and the simple writing style. The little anecdotes loosely strung together effectively portrayed how difficult it must be to relate something of this magnitude. Little absurdities throughout the book reinforced how absurd the whole situation was.

I've heard that this is Vonnegut's "anti-war" book, and I think it works okay in that regard. However, the recurring mantra "So it goes" implies more that war, death, and cruelty are all just inevitable parts of life.

I enjoyed it, but not as much as I was expecting to.

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