I have never been a big reader, so you will not likely see many book reviews from me – but today will be an exception. I’ve been reading a book off and on for almost a year now (I had trouble initially commiting to it). Basically I’d heard the name Kurt Vonnegut thrown around here and there and wanted to find out what he was all about. I had previously borrowed The Sirens of Titan from the library and, while I found the story intriguing, I couldn’t decide if I liked it. So I decided to try one of his more “popular” works. So I picked up Cat’s Cradle (I considered Slaughterhouse Five, but even if the title is not indicative, I didn’t want to chance it) and yesterday I finally finished it.
I will say that knowing when it was written, I can see the insight in it. But the writing style is a little odd to me. The entire story is written from the perspective of the main character (who never is named) and supposedly written after the events described have unfolded. So the book is littered with foreshadowing of what is to come, but much of it is very strange. I’m ok with subtle foreshadowing, but when someone writes about meeting a couple on a plane and in the same sentence where he is describing how couples as close as these two often die close to each other that they would end up dying the same second, it is hard to know how to proceed. There is a mixture of suspense and doubt about taking interest – while it might seem exciting to want to find out how they die, you haven’t yet had time to find the characters interesting enough to care about then that much.
The book is a fictional fantasy about how things could go terribly wrong based on a scientists pursuit of an extreme solution to a mundane problem in the era of nucleur proliferation. The premise is very believable and barely crosses the line of science fiction (with exception to the invention of ice-nine). I’m leanng towards liking it, but I don’t think I would call it a classic (cult, contemporary or otherwise).
I think in the end, it was a good book, but Vonnegut is turning out not to be my genre of choice. The next book I read will likely be the second book in the Dresden Files series by Jim Butcher. I read the first one about a month or so ago and finished it in a few days. Maybe I should review it …