Another Vonnegut?!What can I say? I'm a sucker for that good ol' Vonnegut charm. I happen to think this book was excellent. It was a quick read (says the quick reader), and it had all the Vonnegut elements one would expect from his best writing: frankness, humor and wit, morbidity, grotesqueness, and as I said, charm.
The story is about Rabo Karabekian, an older Armenian-American war veteran who begins writing the story of his own life, past and present. He begins to do so by the demands of a woman he met along his own private beach, Circe, because why not? He's a sad old man in a lonely house with one friend, a cook, and the cook's daughter. The latter two could care less about him. In describing this, I realize that I have barely gotten to the tip of the iceberg; it's difficult to describe his complicated stories.
It's full of those typical Vonnegut one-liners that seem to hit just the right way, that are plain but so true you can't deny them as also being brilliant. After having read many of his books, I think this was Vonnegut's secret to being a good writer-- he is brilliant and maybe a little crazy, but he has an honest-man's voice which prevents his content from always seeming so frightening. Rather, he comes off as funny, true, with a healthy sized portion of startling.
One day I'm really not going to like a book, I swear.
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