A review by adorkablesmile
Catch-22 by Joseph Heller

dark funny reflective fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

Catch-22 is a pitch-perfect indictment of the military-industrial complex, and government bureaucracy as a whole. The story follows Yossarian, a captain in a bomber squadron stationed in the Mediterranean  during the allied invasion of Italy. Told in a distinctly disjointed style, with flowing sentences and abrupt shifts in viewpoint, it jumps in time around various bombing runs as Yossarian grapples with his mortality and the futility of the war. But it's about so much more than that. The war is a background event to the absurdity of the military machine, the capitalist machinations that make its mission of "peace" secondary to profit, the conniving and grudges of the higher-ups that endanger and criminalize the enlisted men, and the endless red tape they cause purely for the pride of causing the most red tape. 
It's dark, it's hilarious, but above all it's a haunting exposé of the absurdity of military bureaucracy.