Started: Jan. 20
Finished: Jan. 22
Notes: I've only read one other Vonnegut novel, Slaughterhouse Five, and that was so long ago I remember nothing about it other than Vonnegut seemed a pretty good writer. So, to see if that's true, I'll now try one of his other works.
Mini review:This was definitely a strange one, with more than a touch of the absurd. A writer sets out to pen a book about one of the creators of the atomic bomb and ends up traveling to an island nation where ... okay, I can't really say more without giving away too much of the plot. I'll simply say this one is ultimately apocalyptic fiction and that fans of the absurd might enjoy it. For me the absurdism seemed forced, but I often feel that way about such fiction. Here it even seemed fatalistic, and I mean the word "fatalistic" in its most negative form, not simply that fate becomes involved but that all is futile. To me it seemed an almost (though not quite) nihilistic tale, and I tend to not care for such. The writing here is excellent and the characters interesting and the plot well worked out, but the ultimate tone and themes didn't do much for me. I guess despite my being an old curmudgeon, I still like to see, if not a happy ending, at least one with a hint of hope. If the story is one in which every dies at the end (Hamlet, The Wild Bunch, etc.), I at least prefer there to be some meaning behind it, and here I felt that meaning could be summed up in one word, "futility." And I don't subscribe that that. Still, a good read, just not exactly my thing.
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