Jailbird: A Novel
by Kurt Vonnegut
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Book Summary Information
Author: Kurt VonnegutEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 1999-01-12
ISBN: 0385333900
Number of pages: 320
Publisher: Dial Press Trade Paperback
Book Reviews of Jailbird: A Novel
Book Review: 3 and 1/2 Stars - Not up to his usual standard
Summary: 3 Stars
Although Vonnegut's deceptively simple prose and unyielding cynical bent are just as ever-present and by turns caustically, heart-piercingly dead accurate and hilarous, this book ends up falling short of the high standard that Vonnegut had set for himself with masterpieces like The Sirens of Titan, Cat's Cradle, and Slaughterhouse-Five. Vonnegut here has created a protagonist who gets himself somehow involved in pretty much all of the major American historical events from the Great Depression through the Watergate scandal... He accomplishes this with a neat (and sometimes confusing) interweaving of fact and fiction: dropping fictional characters and institutions into real, factual events -... The author's observations are as cynical and misanthropic as ever (and maybe even a little more depressing than normal - as we realize in the end that the protagonist, ruined as he is, is basically a decent man), but it is lacking that Great Underlying Moral that is the heart and backbone of every great Vonnegut novel. He attempts to satarize all of these major events in one book, and ends up doing none of them particularly well - much the same thing that happens in another one of his lesser books, God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater. Still, this IS a Vonnegut, so it can't be all that bad - and it is worth reading if you're a major fan of the author. If you're a Vonnegut fan, you'll want to read this, eventually; if you're a neophyte, you should read some of his other, better books first.
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