Review by Booklist Review
Someone, maybe Emerson, predicted that novels would become frankly autobiographical in the twentieth century, and, sure enough, Henry Miller wrote the classic autobiographical novel Tropic of Cancer, Philip Roth and Norman Mailer starred themselves in ostensible novels, and, vice versa, Kenneth Rexroth called his actual life story (another classic) An Autobiographical Novel. Now Vonnegut, who has barged into several previous novels, erases the line between fact and fancy to mostly gabble on like the funny old geezer he is. He tells great jokes, relays more family history than anything else, suggests several new amendments to the Constitution, tosses out a fistful of his trademark tag lines (the best one is "ting-a-ling," although it probably won't supplant Slaughterhouse Five's "so it goes" as Vonnegutians' favorite), and does his mournful, baggy-pants philosopher-clown routine one more time. Oh, there is some indisputable fiction here. Vonnegut has salvaged bits of a 1996 novel, which he aborted at the last minute, based on the premise that a bump in the space-time continuum--a "time-quake" --throws the universe 10 years backward, from 2001 to 1991, and also includes Vonnegut's most famous recurring character (outstanding in God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater), perpetually unsuccessful science-fiction writer Kilgore Trout. This new book's premise is the proposition that most people hate living, with good reason; mixed with the '96 stuff, it spices an utterly Vonnegutian sweet-and-sour stew deliciously. --Ray Olson
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Its publisher calls this Vonnegut's "first full-length work of fiction in seven years" (since the novel Hocus Pocus), which seems like a polite way to avoid claiming it as a novel. It's certainly not that, nor is it, strictly speaking, a collection of stories. It is, rather, a good-natured and delightful ramble around the problem of not being able to get a book to work. Using his science-fictional alter ego Kilgore Trout, Vonnegut talks about a recalcitrant book of Trout's whose premise would have been that "a sudden glitch in the space-time continuum'' occurs, creating a 10-year hitch in time in which everyone is forced to live that period of their lives over again, every word and action exactly repeated, from 1991 until 2001, at which point their lives move forward once more. It is a nice conceit, and Vonnegut and Trout have some fun with it, all interwoven with anecdotes about the Vonnegut family, how it feels to be an aging author and suchlike. There are plenty of Vonnegut gems for the taking (he and William Styron agree at one point that only 17% of people in the world have lives worth living), but the effect of the book is more like a relaxed, jokey conversation than anything else. Call it a patchwork of brief, semi-fictional essays; no matter, Vonnegut is always good company. (Sept.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
Delayed over a year, Vonnegut's latest finally arrives, with alter ego Kilgore Trout facing millennial catastrophe. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
Vonnegut's first ``novel'' in seven years (and 14th overall) might by an extremely generous extension of the term be labeled an unassuming metafiction. Actually, it's unequal parts commonplace book, fragmentary autobiography, dystopian romance, and bemused meditation on our planet's presumable determination to destroy itself. The premise goes as follows: In the year 2001, ``a sudden glitch in the space- time continuum, made everybody and everything do exactly what they'd been doing during the past decade . . . a second time'': i.e., 2001 reverted to 1991, and ``free will kicked in again'' only after said decade had torturously re-run itself. One yearns to know what Thomas Berger might have made of this idea. Vonnegut, essentially, settles for employing it as an excuse to rummage through his own past and that of his alter-ego, the fictional science fiction writer Kilgore Trout. Accordingly, the novel about this ``timequake'' becomes a free-form farrago in which the author tenderly salutes and mourns his living and dead siblings, wives, and children; pays tribute to favorite books and writers; retells old jokes; reminisces about his experiences in WW II, and about his experiences also as a later respected public figure (visiting Nigeria after the Biafran War; giving a speech on the 50th anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima); and woolgathers--often cloyingly--about the fate of ``humanism'' in an age dominated by technology. The book severely tests a reader's patience when it's padded with random bits of semi-relevant information and needless explanations (the plot of The Scarlet Letter; the full text of the 23rd Psalm). And yet, Vonnegut's fitful summaries of the life and writings of the Hunter Thompsonlike Kilgore Trout are often very funny (the story ``The Sisters B-36,'' set on ``the matriarchal planet Booboo,'' really ought to have been written). So, as he himself might say, it goes. ``We are here on earth to fart around'' runs one of Vonnegut's more endearing pronouncements. Nobody does it better.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
