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paperknotbooks's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
4.5
Graphic: Racial slurs, War, and Forced institutionalization
Moderate: Gore and Sexual content
loverboy's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
Graphic: Death, War, Gore, Injury/Injury detail, Sexism, and Violence
Moderate: Murder, Fire/Fire injury, and Rape
Minor: Religious bigotry, Car accident, and Suicide
nnannanna's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
2.0
The way Joseph Heller writes isn't to my liking in the slightest. The explanations of events are verbose, jumping from place to place and character to character. You start a chapter from a plane in the middle of a war and end it in a fully unrelated story that happened 10 years prior. Finally I gave up on trying to understand everything and just plowed through to reach the end.
Lastly the role of women in the book was just... Not? Every single female character is somehow connected to sex. Either they're a sex worker, a nurse that gets sexually assaulted or somehow sex is written into their description. Maybe there is a point to this and it belongs to the satire but I did not catch that.
Graphic: Sexual assault, Sexism, War, and Injury/Injury detail
mahamsiddiqui's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.5
I felt like the novel dragged in places, it also felt like I'm reading someone's diary instead of a novel, sometimes felt like a college student looked up the synonyms in a thesaurus and put every word that they could find in the book.
The book certainly is witty and funny. The characters are well written. Their humanness and fallibility and their complexities make you think or forces you to think, human beings are not black and white. War is evil. Human beings are mere pawns in it, and at the mercy of the fascists, who invoke wars to stroke their tiny egos. Through Yosarrian you see how a person in trying to do the right thing is always caught in exasperating circumstances. The skepticism of Yosarrian is something that I guess all of us go through after a certain point in life. It's relatable and quite understanding.
Moving on, I absolutely did not like and was quite frankly disgusted by the rape and sexual assault scenes. They were described jn graphic details, and I believe for which there was no need. The treatment of women as mere sex toys was very disturbing. And we know that, that's how men treat women especially those who go to war. Women and children and elderly suffer the most. Women and children are raped, brutally assaulted and all because the men who go to war think that it is their right for defending their country to gain sexual pleasures by hook or crook. I just wish that the sexual scenes were described to a minimum.
All in all, book is good, okay. 3.5 stars, .5 extra for Yosarrian. I loved him till the end. You cannot predict that the characters will have this human aspect to them when you first start the book but as you go by and the book explore similar scenes from different POVs you understand them and mildly condemn yourself for judging them too hastily.
Graphic: Bullying, Rape, Schizophrenia/Psychosis , Sexual harassment, Sexual violence, Torture, War, and Violence
Minor: Injury/Injury detail
bellaklimperauge's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.5
Moderate: Rape, Sexual violence, Sexual assault, Death, War, Murder, and Sexism
proceduralbob's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.5
Graphic: Gore, Violence, and War
Moderate: Alcohol and Rape
c3liaiswhoiam's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
1.5
Moderate: Rape, Injury/Injury detail, Gaslighting, Violence, Sexual harassment, Sexual violence, and War
seanml's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.25
Graphic: Panic attacks/disorders, Sexism, Injury/Injury detail, Death, and Gore
Moderate: Gaslighting, Grief, Alcohol, Alcoholism, Body horror, Confinement, Cursing, Medical content, Animal cruelty, Sexual assault, Murder, Racism, Vomit, War, Adult/minor relationship, Gun violence, Infertility, Mental illness, Misogyny, Physical abuse, Rape, and Torture
Minor: Cannibalism
elmewhy's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
2.5
*rounded to 3 stars
I think it’s fair to say that this review is a modern Gen Z take on a classic that was not written for me or for people of my time. This book was just not for me. While I appreciate that this book was written at a different time, I couldn’t forgive some parts of it. I decided to split my review into a pro and con list.
Pro
It’s a classic for a reason. The origins and concept of the term ‘Catch 22’ is genius. After researching this book, I can see why it was so popular, especially with young people during the Vietnam War.
War Representation. I did appreciate the insanity of war portrayal and the desperateness this led to. I’ve not seen a lot of portrayals of this in classic or modern media, and it was an interesting take to see.
Format. Polarising, but I enjoyed the format. It is disjointed with sporadic short stories mentioned, which are revealed later in the book, the re-read ability is huge, and you can reread parts with a brand new understanding. There are many characters, but this format taught me whos who much more quickly. Although not comparable, I did get a Grand Budapest Hotel vibe from the format/humour/visualisation.
Con
Misogyny. There’s a lot of this; in fact, I don’t believe a female character is mentioned in a way that wasn’t sexual or perverse or made them out to be less than deranged. Here are some examples:
One character is named “Nately’s Whore”, who is a prop prostitute for a character until they get mentioned more and becomes a psycho stalker killer. Lots of inappropriate touching, mostly sexual assault and the women don’t always seem to care?! Mentions of underage women (as young as 12) and virgins are sexualised - although we never see this, it is idolised heavy. **Trigger!** A very heartless and glossed-over mention of a rape where the female dies from it and gets thrown out of a window, with no consequence even though the police turn up, but they chose to focus on other topics rather than the raped and murdered women lying in the street.
Racism. N-word usage - only really in the beginning. Again, something which is more prominent in older books as it was the norm during this time but does not hold up in the modern day.
Humour. I just did not get the humour, there were parts in which I thought ohh I get why people think it's funny, but I definitely wouldn’t call this hilarious. The humour was repetitive (the same word play humour beat to death), the context was just not funny, and, for me, the misogynistic, classism and racist overtones overshadowed the book for it to be funny.
If you’re a fan of adult-level pantomime jokes, you’ll be fine.
Ultimately, while you get to say you’ve read this notorious classical book and boast to all your friends that you’re smart and read more than YA/fantasy/preferred genre, you actually have to put yourself through it - so how’s that for a Catch 22?
Graphic: War, Death, Misogyny, and Injury/Injury detail
Moderate: Rape, Racial slurs, Medical content, and Racism
Minor: Suicide and Vomit
annie_reads_books's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.0
Moderate: War, Gore, Misogyny, and Rape