Book #55: Cat's Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut
Cat's Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
I previously read Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse 5, and was keen to read this too.
The main character and narrator is an author called Jonah, who takes an interest in the late Dr. Felix Hoenikker, one of the creators of the atomic bomb (a topical issue for the 1960s, when this was written, as there would have been a lot of paranoia about this subject). Hoenikker has also invented a substance called "ice-nine", apparently to stop troops from having to walk through mud, but with apparently lethal potential.
So, Jonah is determined to get his hands on Ice-Nine, and finds out about it is mostly by tracking down and interviewing Hoenikkier's adult children.
The world in this book is dystopian, and has given rise to a bizarre new religion called "Bokonism", said to be outlawed in many places.
My understanding is that this is meant to be a book about how the world could end, so I wasn't surprised to see a lot of satire, full of absurdity in a style similar to that of Joseph Heller. I remember finding Slaughterhouse 5 difficult, and certainly I found this book confusing to begin with, but I gradually got into it, and enjoyed how Vonnegut made everyone seem ridiculous.
The ending was signalled quite early on, but I still enjoyed it, and it felt epic. I suspect though that to get the most out of this book, I'd have to re-read it a couple of times, to get some of the points that I may have missed.
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