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camw's review against another edition
dark
funny
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
3.75
culuriel's review against another edition
5.0
Vonnegut shows how varying the chronology is supposed to be done. A story where the sci-fi helps with the historical, where the emotional dislocation of surviving the fire-bombing of Dresden can only be explained by comparing it to appearing in an extraterrestrial zoo. Beautiful, sad, and funny.
sara_reads_things's review against another edition
3.0
This book was on one of my book challenge lists, otherwise I wouldn't normally pick it up. It was interesting, but not amazing. I felt bogged down at times and the story moved too slow for me.
Sara | Book Confessions of an ExBallerina
Sara | Book Confessions of an ExBallerina
zoeythekat's review against another edition
4.0
Slaughterhouse Five is well written, insightful, and in true Vonnegut fashion--funny? Ironic. In true Vonnegut fashion *ironic*. It's a tad bit bizarre, which I think is important to know before reading. Elements of the text are autobiographical, other elements are metaphorical--in a very science-fiction manner... At any rate, I enjoyed it immensely.
frissoncat81's review against another edition
5.0
The Nazi propaganda info about Americans was so tragically accurate that it made me tear up a bit.
steven_nobody's review against another edition
5.0
This is one of the books I return to when bored by books. I really like the theory that is not science fiction but a story about a murdered man's jumbled memories and illusions as he dies.
timostler's review against another edition
3.0
Having previously been put off Vonnegut by his self-indulgent style in Breakfast of Champions, reading his most celebrated book I find myself warming to him somewhat, as there is more here than just a contractual book-obligation. In particular the central idea is consoling -- that of a four-dimensional view of life, meaning amongst other things that once something has happened it will continue to exist indefinitely. It also resonates with my own perception: think of any decade you have experienced and contemplate that before it you had no idea what its character would be but after it has happened it remains to be contemplated in all its variety for ever after.
hayesall's review against another edition
5.0
There's a quote from Life magazine that this is "A funny book at which you are not permitted to laugh, a sad book without tears." But I definitely laughed and cried at least once each. A couple more perspectives also jump out.
We might interpret this literally as a science fiction novel about experiencing time nonlinearly, in line with The Sound and the Fury and Ted Chiang's Story of Your Life. In this sense, Vonnegut uses the aliens from Tralfamadore to explore questions about free will, the nature of time, and how three-dimensional creatures experience each.
Or we might interpret this in a line of war stories with The Red Badge of Courage (referenced by Vonnegut) and The Things They Carried that increasingly use absurdities in fiction to describe the absurdities in the real world. In this sense, Vonnegut bends the social contract between fiction writing and fiction reading in his autobiographical novel, or as Peter Turchi puts it:
The horrors that occurred do not seem like things that could literally have happened in the real world. Therefore the only appropriate choice is then to bend the rules of what people expect in fiction: present something true in a place where people expect to read lies.
We might interpret this literally as a science fiction novel about experiencing time nonlinearly, in line with The Sound and the Fury and Ted Chiang's Story of Your Life. In this sense, Vonnegut uses the aliens from Tralfamadore to explore questions about free will, the nature of time, and how three-dimensional creatures experience each.
Or we might interpret this in a line of war stories with The Red Badge of Courage (referenced by Vonnegut) and The Things They Carried that increasingly use absurdities in fiction to describe the absurdities in the real world. In this sense, Vonnegut bends the social contract between fiction writing and fiction reading in his autobiographical novel, or as Peter Turchi puts it:
"On the most fundamental level, all fiction rests on the unwritten statement, 'This is fiction.' The reader is, traditionally, asked to ignore that knowledge, but the reader needs to have it, nevertheless; otherwise, everything that follows would be a miscommunication. [Footnote: In the last century and in this one, an increasing number of writers as diverse as John Barth, Tim O'Brien, and David Shields have made that very issue the subject of their work. Such writing rests heavily on our awareness that we bring different expectations and assumptions to prose that calls itself 'fiction'.]" -- Peter Turchi, Maps of the Imagination: The Writer as Cartographer, p. 60
The horrors that occurred do not seem like things that could literally have happened in the real world. Therefore the only appropriate choice is then to bend the rules of what people expect in fiction: present something true in a place where people expect to read lies.
eleanorfranzen's review against another edition
5.0
By far the most humane, the most tender, the most good-humouredly resigned, book about war I've ever read, and maybe ever written. There's nothing either po-faced or crass about it, but it is sweet and sad, and gestures at futility whilst still, bizarrely, managing to be uplifting. Loved.
jclenzi's review against another edition
1.0
I like to think I'm somewhat intelligent - but after 4 chapters of this book, I have no clue whatsoever what the heck is going on - and life is too short for finishing something like that.