Book Overview #11: Slaughterhouse Five

This is a book about a man who is constantly jumping back and forth in time. He doesn’t time travel and he doesn’t change anything, since what he is basically doing is reminiscing his past in a way that seems like he is traveling in time.

So yeah, this is not one of those stories where people are trying to change the past in order to prevent an event they regret in the present. It still is about regret though, since the protagonist is essentially jumping in time as means to find meaning in all the terrible things that happened to him.

He witnessed a terrible massacre in WW2, he was the sole survivor of a plane crash, and his wife died in a traffic accident. All that, led his mind to create fictional memories as means to cope with the pain. So although we know what his whole life was like from the very beginning, the constant jumps in time serve to slowly explain how his fictional memories were formed.

I don’t want to get into details since this way I spoil the whole thing. Let’s just say that the crust of the book is gradually learning how his imaginary worldview was inspired by the books he was reading, or the people he met. So essentially, it is a character study of a fragile mind than war drama or science fiction.

The issue here is that there is no actual plot to speak of, no real objective, and not even many thrilling events to be excited about. The horrors of war and the alien planet (yes, there is such a thing) are very memorable but they are not meant to make you sad or intrigued about the world the story takes place in. They are more like layers of the protagonist’s mentality.

And he’s not even a cool protagonist. Throughout the book he remains a passive observer, unable to affect a single event he revisits. There isn’t even a well-excused transition from one time period to another; it just happens with little to no justification.

This results in a dull and confusing book, since you are not given any incentive to keep reading, other than a vague promise of getting answers about a guy you are given no reason to care about. Even the style of narration is poor in prose and feels closer to dry descriptions of events, since it is essentially about someone remembering what happened and mentioning it as straightforward as he can.

The best way to enjoy the book is to see it like a documentary that is narrated in a non-linear fashion and is often mixing up facts with fantasy because of the damaged mentality of the narrator. It’s almost entirely meta-commentary on the war and the meaning of life through the lens of a b-grade science fiction fan.

It didn’t leave me with any positive or negative impressions, since it’s doing everything it set out to do but not in a captivating way. Even after understanding the way the protagonist feels, I don’t find him interesting, and his way of thinking has been done way better in many movies I have watched over the years. Average book, low recommendation.