Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut

Reviewed by Paul

Thoughtful, strange and darkly funny.

Billy Pilgrim has become “unstuck in time”, moving between his life as an optometrist, his experiences as a prisoner of war in Dresden, and an extraordinary encounter with aliens. Beneath the science fiction is a deeply humane book about war, memory, trauma and the stories we tell ourselves in order to survive.

Vonnegut writes with remarkable simplicity. His humour is sharp and his emotional moments are deeply affecting. This is not a conventional war novel, nor quite a conventional novel at all. It is brief, inventive and unsettling — the sort of book that stays in your mind long after you have finished it.

Recommended for readers of George Orwell, Joseph Heller, Margaret Atwood and anyone who enjoys fiction that makes them think while quietly breaking their heart