A review by redcephei
Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut

hopeful reflective

5.0

Aaah that was so good. I did not expect the ending "pooteeweet?" to hit as hard as it did, given that I knew it was coming. It was unsatisfying but so very appropriate, perfectly summarising the "so it goes" attitude of Tralfamodorians and thus Billy Pilgrim. This book is weird. It's not written in chronological order. It doesn't feel like traditional first or third person perspective (more like a third person augmented reality on top of first person non fiction). The writing style is inexplicably good. It's beautifully written not thanks to imagery or figurative language which I could dissect more easily but because it has so much character and it builds on itself and references itself in a beautiful and highly appropriate way. Besides that, the plot is beautiful too. Change of any kind is difficult and complex and the non-linearity of time is reassuring. It's personal because I've been thinking about it a lot and reading this book at times felt like somebody refining my thoughts and saying them back to me. There are so many little parts of this book that make me feel things that I can't fully describe you just need to read it to understand. I love how he says "So it goes" to every death from the death of a spouse to the death of an insect to the death of a concept. It kind of (perhaps unintentionally) ties in with the concept of the oneness of the universe that I've been finding interesting in other books. Overall this book is really good and at time of writing, I cannot sincerely compare it to anything else I have ever known.