Item: Cat's Cradle
Rating: 4.00
Author: clementine

by Kurt Vonnegut

With his trademark dry wit, Kurt Vonnegut's Cat's Cradle is an inventive science fiction satire that preys on our deepest fears of witnessing Armageddon - and, worse still, surviving it. This Penguin Modern Classics edition includes an introduction by Benjamin Kunkel.

Dr Felix Hoenikker, one of the founding 'fathers' of the atomic bomb, has left a deadly legacy to humanity. For he is the inventor of ice-nine, a lethal chemical capable of freezing the entire planet. Writer Jonah's search for his whereabouts leads him to Hoenikker's three eccentric children, to an island republic in the Caribbean where the absurd religion of Bokononism is practised, to love and to insanity. Told with deadpan humour and bitter irony, Kurt Vonnegut's cult tale of global destruction is a frightening and funny satire on the end of the world and the madness of mankind.

Kurt Vonnegut (1922-2007) was born in Indianapolis. During the Second World War he was a prisoner in Germany and present at the bombing of Dresden, an experience he recounted in his famous novel Slaughterhouse Five (1969). His first novel, Player Piano, was published in 1951 and since then he has written many novels, including The Sirens of Titan, Jailbird, Deadeye Dick, Galapagos and Hocus Pocus.

If you enjoyed Cat's Cradle, you might like Philip K. Dick's The Man in the High Castle, also available in Penguin Modern Classics.

'One of the warmest, wisest, funniest voices to be found anywhere in fiction'
Sam Leith, Daily Telegraph

'A free-wheeling vehicle ... An unforgettable ride!'
The New York Times

'Vonnegut looked the world straight in the eye and never flinched'
J.G. Ballard

Okay, jeez, I've put off reviewing this book for so long. I feel really mixed about it, to be honest, and I've been thinking about what to say about it ever since I finished it ten days ago. I still don't really know how to approach this.

SO. There were a lot of very quotable parts of Cat's Cradle that really resonated with me. And the exploration of religion and politics and corruption was great. This is post-apocalyptic in a much different way from what I usually read, and I liked that. It was new and different, and since I've been reading a lot of YA dystopian that blends together in a puddle of mediocrity, that's always welcome.

I feel like I need to read this book a hundred more times to really "get" it. It's so complex, full of paradoxes and metaphors and all sorts of things that I really don't feel I fully got the first time. I never do completely get books the first time I read them (and I almost always enjoy them exponentially more the second time), but this is different to me. This feels deceptively simple, like while you're reading it it's easy to follow but when you finish you realize it's a tangled web underneath the surface. But then again, maybe that's just what I'm supposed to believe. It would certainly play into the exploration of reality and truth that is present in Cat's Cradle.

This isn't even a proper review, it's just... thoughts. Thoughts in the form of word vomit, really.

I don't know, man. I enjoyed it, but I need to read it again. I feel like I'm missing something, or maybe it's just the book that's missing something. It confused me, at least, and maybe that makes me stupid or a poor reader, but I just don't know what to make of it.

Cat's Cradle (Modern Critical Interpretations S.) (Penguin science fiction) (S.F. Masterworks)

by Kurt Vonnegut

Reviewed by clementine on Oct 2, 2012

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