Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

 275 pages / 5 hrs, 54 mins

Selected by the Modern Library as one of the 100 best novels of all time, Slaughterhouse-Five, an American classic, is one of the world's great antiwar books. Centering on the infamous firebombing of Dresden, Billy Pilgrim's odyssey through time reflects the mythic journey of our own fractured lives as we search for meaning in what we fear most.

From Goodreads' About the Author: "His experiences as an advance scout in the Battle of the Bulge, and in particular his witnessing of the bombing of Dresden, Germany whilst a prisoner of war, would inform much of his work. This event would also form the core of his most famous work, Slaughterhouse-Five, the book which would make him a millionaire. This acerbic 200-page book is what most people mean when they describe a work as "Vonnegutian" in scope."

I'm not sure I have words to express my thoughts about this strange and interesting novel. It will stay with me for a long time. I listened to this on the library's CD copy, and when it was finished, I didn't remove it from the player right away. Then the author started talking about the book and his experience in WWII. It gave some closure to the story. 

Slaughterhouse-Five, or the Children's Crusade by Ryan North (Goodreads Author) (adaptor), Kurt Vonnegut Jr., Albert Monteys (Illustrations)

 Slaughterhouse-Five, or the Children's Crusade

by Ryan North (Goodreads Author) (adaptor), Kurt Vonnegut Jr., Albert Monteys (Illustrations)-192 pages

"So it goes." This is the statement after every mention of death. Whether it's one person or a multitude who has died this is said. Billy Pilgrim is an 18-year-old soldier serving on the European front who gets captured and sent to a German prison camp. He ends up in Dresden, Germany and witnesses the Allied bombings there that kill 25,000 civilians. He also witnesses the death by firing squad of a comrade. This book is presented as Billy coming out of time ("unstuck") at different points in his life. It goes back and forth between these points in time. Slaughter House-Five is the place where Billy and the other Allies end up in Dresden as refugees. He survives because he hid in the meat locker below ground while the bombings raged. They emerged to find Dresden in ruins. This novel, even in graphic form, is thought-provoking on war and the nature of man. I thought of all the wars man has ever fought (as many as I could think of anyway), such as the Peloponnesian War, The Crusades, The Hundred Years' War, The American Civil War, World War I and II, The Korean War, The Vietnam War, and so many more. There's a video game series called "Fallout" and at the end of several of the games in the series the statement is made "because war, war never changes." Reading this work made me think of that statement. Overall, I found this to be thought-provoking and full of dark humor.