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Title: A remarkable novel
Review: This novel challanges our assumptions of what a novel should be. The book is relentlessly internal, giving it a strongly claustrophobic feel, but it remains a truly disturbing work. Something Happened is the polar opposite of the more famous Catch-22, but comically, Something Happened is perhaps Heller's best, most sophisticated novel, Heller achieving a superior subtlety through implication, understatement, and irony (as opposed to the brash parody and satire of Catch-22). The book also remains Heller's most ambitious and experimental, and for this reason will turn many readers away. Still, I loved it: I found the narrative voice genuinely compelling and oddly hypnotic. The book lacks a conventional plot, but makes up for it with a fascinating narrator who at first may seem horrible and alien to us, but in fact is much closer to us than we would care to admit. A great, dark psychological portrait of a man who has lost his way.
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