Book Review: Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut

Title: Slaughterhouse-Five

Author: Kurt Vonnegut

Genre: Classic Sci-fi

Number of Pages: 275

Rating: A

Recommended?: Yes

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I don’t read a lot of classics which is weird because when I do I usually like them. I picked Slaughterhouse-Five to read partially because it wasn’t very long and I read almost the whole thing in one day. The writing wasn’t overly elaborate or flowery at all and it pulled me right in. The book is about WWII veteran named Billy Pilgrim who arbitrarily time-travels and phases in and out of various parts of his life, past and future.

Billy is a strange, spacey sort and he was never much of a warrior. He has an unusual viewpoint on his life because the way he experiences it is more fluid than most people. He was also abducted by aliens, which further changes his view on things to the point where he can barely relate at all to ‘normal’ people. The premise of this book is really cool and it’s beautifully done, with lots of odd anecdotes and interconnected stories.

The story itself is a book-within-a-book written by a guy who survived a POW camp and usually I don’t like that kind of plot device (I find it gimmicky and it takes me out of the story) but in this case it actually ended up working. As soon as I finished this book I added most of Kurt Vonnegut’s books to my TBR list, the guy truly had an amazing imagination.