God Bless You, Mr Rosewater

by Kurt Vonnegut

With the satirical eye of his science fiction author alter ego Kilgore Trout, the author of Slaughterhouse-Five delivers a classic of modern American literature.

Eliot Rosewater, President of the fabulously rich Rosewater Foundation and volunteer firefighter, is tortured by an inheritance he doesn’t feel that he deserves. After (unfortunately) developing a social conscience, he sets out on a drunken tour of America, unravelling a little more at every stop until his path crosses with the science-fiction writer Kilgore Trout.

God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater is one of Kurt Vonnegut’s funniest satires, about the pleasures, pains and perversions of people and money, the obsessions of a famous family and the collective madness of a nation.

• ISBN10: 1407086987
• ISBN13: 9781407086989
• Publish Date: 1 December 2011 (first published 1 January 1991)
• Publish Status: Active
• Publish Country: GB
• Publisher: Vintage Publishing
• Imprint: Vintage Digital
• Format: eBook (EPUB)
• Pages: 192
• Language: English

Reviews

[clementine]

In the mid-60s, eccentric alcoholic Eliot Rosewater feels (rightfully) guilty about the massive fortune he is set to inherit and dedicates his life to extravagant philanthropy lavished on a small town in Indiana. Meanwhile, a young lawyer assigned to help manage the Rosewater Foundation’s vast wealth sees opportunity in having Eliot declared legally insane and transferring his wealth to his distant cousin, a working class insurance salesman in Rhode Island. This appears to be Vonnegut’s most overtly political book in that he very clearly takes the stance that extreme wealth is unethical. (Well, I guess the anti-war message of Slaughterhouse-Five is up there, too.) Central to the novel is the idea that some people have no use (meaning they do not generate wealth) but that they deserve help and love anyway. As always, there is so much humanity in Vonnegut’s dark humour and absurdism. The ending of this one is hilariously satisfying in a way Vonnegut so rarely is. This is top tier for me – and now I only have three Vonnegut novels left to read. I’m hoping to knock those off before the year is out!