T.E. W. (terez93) reviewed on 10/10/2019 + 345 more book reviews

This was a very curious collection of Vonnegut-like short stories which have a shade of moral message in them. I'll read anything Vonnegut, but this wasn't really my favorite, perhaps because he takes a while to build a world before he implodes it in spectacular fashion. These plucky and capable, if often rather uninspired stories, were well worth a read, however. My favorite was the mama's boy obsessed with his model train setup, to the detriment of his poor wife, but mama takes action and solves the problem in spectacular fashion.

The foreword states that these were "early-career" stories, which differ from his later work, which needed to ripen and mature to reach the "darker, grimmer, more exasperated" tone characteristic of his numerous later novels. There is little of the delightful farce I've come to know and love in these shorts, but this collection is extremely valuable in terms of allowing readers to gauge the evolution of this genius writer's style, and how events in his life shaped the body of his work. Despite their brevity, however, they do herald some of the most well-known traits of KV's writing, specifically the critique of modernity, and, in particular, Americana: the traveling salesman who is obsessed with his own creation (a talking refrigerator robot: now THAT'S proper Vonnegut!), the man obsessed with his model trains, the tycoon obsessed with winning a Christmas light contest. KV's characters are deeply flawed, yet deeply human, and sometimes (rarely), even sympathetic.

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