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Title: Excellent introduction to Vonnegut
Review: This was the first Vonnegut I've read and so far it's my favorite. I am amazed how Vonnegut can contrive wildly imaginative stories and tie them together in a meaningful way. Slaughterhouse-Five is a story about a story of a Billy Pilgrim who becomes unstuck in time and relives different moments of his life. At the surface it seems he is just suffering from delusions from his war experiences. But the narrator makes us believe he has discovered a 'truth' from the Tralfamadorians about the nature of time, that it is not linear like beads on a string but comprised of almost independent moments, and one could jump among them and perhaps see them backwards. Instead of making Billy crazy these ideas make him sympathetic, because they provide a different and beautiful way of looking at human issues of loss and regret.Vonnegut somehow combines an interesting story, drama, and subtle humor that you may not spot the first time around in a very readable novel.
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