Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut

I read this novel as a young man and again later in my 30s. I thought I'd give it another read to see if it's as strange as I'd remembered. What a weird and quirky novel. Part war story, part science fiction, and part bizarro, observational comedy, I couldn't explain it concisely if I tried. The disparate plot (what little there is) tells the strange life of Billy Pilgrim, a WWII veteran who lived through the bombing of Dresden, one of the most horrific events of WWII. But he soon becomes "unstuck in time" and we careen back and forth throughout his life: his time as an optometrist, his time in WWII, the time he was abducted by aliens called Tralfamadorians, who see the entirety of time all at once. Strange story. Is Billy’s unstuck state an analogy for insanity? Could be. Vonnegut (he is the narrator of the novel and appears in the Dresden part of the story) tells this strange story with an empathetic lilt as he retells many of the disturbing events that Billy and the other characters endure, punctuating any mention of death with his well-known phrase, "So it goes."

Since the Tralfamadorians see time as a whole and not in a linear fashion, I imagine that’s how Vonnegut approached this story. Told in sections that are out of order (literally and figuratively), the one thing that is a constant is Vonnegut’s narrative voice. How to describe it? Silly, empathetic, philosophical, observant, whimsical, searing, unapologetic. A hilariously observant passage finds Billy Pilgrim in a train car filled with war prisoners during WWII. He’s sitting next to a hobo who is not a prisoner; he’s just on the train for the ride. The train car is filthy, despondent, cold, and the prisoners are hungry, tired, dejected. The hobo tells Billy, “This ain’t bad. This ain’t nothing at all.” It’s all in your perspective, Vonnegut seems to offer the reader. So it goes.

I thoroughly enjoyed this novel and I highly recommend it. I would give this novel 5 stars.

Buy the hardcover on Bookshop: https://bookshop.org/a/152/9780385312080