Slaughterhouse Five - Kurt Vonnegut

Amongst the wide range of offerings within the war novel genre, Slaughterhouse Five stands out as something a little different. A mixture of Kurt Vonnegut's experiences as a Prisoner of War and the author's prodigious, far-reaching and often quite bizarre imagination, the novel slips slickly between genres and styles, and has a strangely touching quality. Slaughterhouse Five, first published in 1969, introduces us to Billy Pilgrim, a young American who is a peculiar choice as a hero. Weak, awkward and decidedly uncomfortable in his own shoes, we follow Pilgrim through his life. The narrative moves from the young Pilgrim, traipsing through the forests and ...  Read the complete review

Slaughterhouse 5 - Kurt Vonnegut - Price unknown taken out in library When I was told 'put this book to the top of your list' I was a bit dubious... Slaughterhouse 5... sounds a bit nasty! Not having heard of Kurt Vonnegut or any of his work I wasn't sure what to expect. However my local library happened to have a copy and so I thought 'why not!'. Settling down with a cup of tea I didn't know what to expect. Kurt Vonnegut himself was captured by the Germans in Dresden and this book was his "story", I put story in inverted commas because apart from a few cameos, 'that was me', the book is entirely based on a fictional character named Billy ...  Read the complete review

Kurt Vonnegut survived the fire-bombing of Dresden during World War II: this is the novel that was filtered out of that experience. Like J.G. Ballard’s Empire of the Sun, in which Ballard creates a novel of his childhood experience of being interred in a Japanese prisoner of war camp, Slaughterhouse-5 took a number of years to emerge from its author’s heart and brain, both authors clearly needing time and mastery of their art to do justice to such significant experiences in their lives. In Slaughterhouse-5, Billy Pilgrim has come ‘unstuck’ in time. Abducted by aliens who see all time at once, simultaneously, instead of in consecutive, ...  Read the complete review

For those who believe in destiny time is but a bug stuck in amber; just a single moment that will be that moment and has been that moment forever. Time is but one more demension in our world filled with space. Like space, one is capable of navigating and moving about within time to different blobs of amber. In this way, if a member of a family were pass away they would not be dead. Instead they are simply stuck in another distinct moment of time. They have always died and will always die in the exact same moment. Most people retain only the capability to focus on the single moment they find themselves within. Others, however, find themselves traveling ...  Read the complete review

Take Billy Pilgrim, our hero and take him on a trip along his life travelling in time. OK, so we're well in the realms of science fiction and we're staying there for the whole movie. The majority of Pilgrims travels we get to see are the parts of his life when he was a GI who was captured during World War 2. He's unlucky enough to get sent to Dresden and be there when it got bombed by the allies. (If it had nothing military there, WHY the hell were they bombing it?). You get to see him travel to his childhood and even to the moment of his own death! He's also abducted by sex obsessed aliens who just want to watch him mating. I haven't actually read ...  Read the complete review