Book Forty-Two of the Book a Week QuestMother Night
by Kurt Vonnegut (1961)
This is probably the quickest read for me in this Book-a-Week Quest as I made it through this book's 267 pages in less than four hours. I definitely enjoyed this much more than the previous Vonnegut book I read for this Quest.
The story is told via the writings of Howard W. Campbell, Jr., as he details his life as an American spy during WWII. That being said, was he really a US spy or was he a Nazi sympathizer? The nice thing about the book is that it doesn't really give us a clear answer. It seems that Campbell himself isn't quite sure what he is either.
Vonnegut's writing here is so breezy and easygoing. The dialogue here felt right on and I enjoyed that Vonnegut didn't bog down the book with excessive descriptions -- pretty much straightforward stuff here...nothing superfluous. Sure, there's nothing really deep here, but it's not as if this is a throwaway book. It definitely brings a bunch of things to the table. Questions about love, betrayal, being one's true self (and whether that's a positive or negative). I really enjoyed it.
The story is told via the writings of Howard W. Campbell, Jr., as he details his life as an American spy during WWII. That being said, was he really a US spy or was he a Nazi sympathizer? The nice thing about the book is that it doesn't really give us a clear answer. It seems that Campbell himself isn't quite sure what he is either.
Vonnegut's writing here is so breezy and easygoing. The dialogue here felt right on and I enjoyed that Vonnegut didn't bog down the book with excessive descriptions -- pretty much straightforward stuff here...nothing superfluous. Sure, there's nothing really deep here, but it's not as if this is a throwaway book. It definitely brings a bunch of things to the table. Questions about love, betrayal, being one's true self (and whether that's a positive or negative). I really enjoyed it.
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