Player Piano

by Kurt Vonnegut

[clementine]

This is my eighth Vonnegut novel, and I've finally realized that I tend to like his non-sci fi works better. (I hesitate to call them "realistic" because they're obviously all absurdist.) Player Piano is his first novel and it's markedly different from his other works stylistically and tonally, though it plays with similar themes and motifs. The prose is more straightforward and less biting, and this is definitely the most character-driven of everything I've read by him so far. It really struck me that the fictional America where almost every job has been replaced by a machine is still relevant 65 years later. The story was interesting and it was cool to actually get inside a Vonnegut character's head to this extent, but he just hadn't developed his writing style fully in 1952 and this is not my favourite of his books.