Book info

• Title Slaughterhouse-Five
• Author Kurt Vonnegut
• Year 1969
• Genre Science Fiction

Billy Pilgrim – hapless barber's assistant, successful optometrist, alien abductee, senile widower and soldier – has become unstuck in time. Hiding in the basement of a slaughterhouse in Dresden, with the city and its inhabitants burning above him, he finds himself a survivor of one of the most deadly and destructive battles of the Second World War. But when, exactly? How did he get here? And how does he get out? Travel through time and space on the shoulders of Vonnegut himself. This is a book about war. Listen to what he has to say: it is of the utmost urgency.

Thoughts

I’ve heard Kurt Vonnegut’s name mentioned occasionally but didn’t really know what his books were about, or his style of writing. I quite enjoyed the book, I liked the back and forth nature, and obviously time travel appeals to me a lot. I liked the science fiction element played against the war scenes, although it was hard to reconcile both worlds.

I’ve now seen that this was controversial for being whimsical, but I didn’t find it that way. It was, for me, intensely depressing. It’s drawn from the author’s own experience, which makes it hard-hitting. The stories of prisoner-of-war camps are never easy to digest, and Dresden can be added to that list. Even the far-fetched stories of being abducted by aliens aren’t exactly fun.

Then there’s the “and so it goes” thing. It’s used every time there’s a mention of death, and it gets really, really annoying - used more than 100 times. Which proves how much death is in the book. So, I have mixed feelings about it. A good read, but unsettling and mostly just sad.

Rating: 4 / 5