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A review by tricksyliesmith
Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut
3.0
I can't really say I enjoyed 'Slaughterhouse 5' as much as I thought I would, to be honest.
It has a good blend of tragedy and comic relief. Using a fractured structure of prose and a 'time-travel' element that allows Vonnegut to switch back and forth through the narrative is a novel idea, but one I often finds leaves the reader in limbo as to what is actually going on.
It's incredbily blase about death and destruction, in that the narrator uses the line 'so it goes' as a coping method after each terrible account is revealed.
With regards to prose it is quite minimalist, there's a lot of colourful characters.
The reader is constantly questioning whether Billy Pilgrim's lack of emotion is due to post-traumatic stress, dementia, brain trauma or even the possibility of time-travel. Overall it is an erratic, jumbled re-telling of his life as he remembers it in the moment.
It has a good blend of tragedy and comic relief. Using a fractured structure of prose and a 'time-travel' element that allows Vonnegut to switch back and forth through the narrative is a novel idea, but one I often finds leaves the reader in limbo as to what is actually going on.
It's incredbily blase about death and destruction, in that the narrator uses the line 'so it goes' as a coping method after each terrible account is revealed.
With regards to prose it is quite minimalist, there's a lot of colourful characters.
The reader is constantly questioning whether Billy Pilgrim's lack of emotion is due to post-traumatic stress, dementia, brain trauma or even the possibility of time-travel. Overall it is an erratic, jumbled re-telling of his life as he remembers it in the moment.