Book review: Slaughterhouse-Five, or The Children's Crusade

Despite a theatre habit I'll cheerfully admit is an addiction, there's still plenty of "classic" plays I'm not familiar with yet. So it's not surprising that there's even more "must-read" books that I haven't got round to, but as usual kindle offers come to the rescue. This time with Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five, subtitled The Children's Crusade to reference the youth of most of the Allied soldiers in World War II. The central event is the bombing of Dresden, during which the lead character Billy Pilgrim is a prisoner-of-war being held in the titular slaughterhouse - ironically making him one of the few survivors.

In fact the bombing itself is barely described, instead the narrative jumps around Billy's life, from his time in the War from capture onwards, to his later days when he returns to the US and becomes a successful optometrist. But the biggest event for him is one he "remembers" after an accident, when he announces that he was once abducted by an alien race and taken to be shown in their zoo, where he found out about their fatalistic view on life, as they don't see linear time but all events as existing simultaneously on some level.

As well as a rather moving little comment on a man creating such an elaborate coping strategy for the unpredictable tragedies of his life, this also provides the structure for the way the story's told, with Billy "time-travelling" backwards and forwards between critical moments of his life. I found it a simple and effective little satire, and it's incredible to think it's still considered controversial in certain parts of the USA.