Posts Tagged ‘kurt vonnegut’

Galápagos is a Kurt Vonnegut novel and there are some mild spoilers below.

Told from a million years in the future, it is narrated by a ghost who has watched humanity evolve from the big-brained creatures we are today into a species similar to seals that spend all day in the sun, eating and mating.

Elina promised me she could tell me all this because you get it all at the start of the novel. However, you don’t. You only find out he is a ghost halfway through. Maybe I could have worked it out, but it’s hard to say given I already knew that was the case.

I’m coming to the conclusion that I am not a fan of Vonnegut’s work. As with Slaughterhouse Five, nothing is ever particularly clear, he just slowly drip-feeds you information throughout the story. Good concept, and an interesting story, but I found reading it quite hard work.

What was this book about?

I was told it was about the bombing of Dresden, but most of the story was about a guy called Billy Pilgrim who could travel through time and spent some of his life living in a zoo on an alien planet.

You would think that you would get some sense from the linear story telling. However, when you can travel backwards and forwards through time, that quickly becomes irrelevant. It’s enough to drive a man to suicide. So it goes.