"I was (fortunately) forced to read Slaughterhouse 5 in high school, and for a long time I didn't know that Vonnegut had moved away from scifi by the 1980s. The voice he gives Rabo, a wealthy, weary old man cajoled into writing his memoirs by a beautiful interloper, is an endearing mix of passivity and incisiveness that I've come to associate with Vonnegut himself. What gives the novel its power, though, is the unresolved mystery at its core, which is reflected in both the plot and Vonnegut's style. If you have vague memories of his books but haven't read him in a while (like me) rekindle your love with Bluebeard!"
Publisher Dial Press Trade Paperback
Publication Date 1998-09-08
Section Fiction / All Staff Suggestions / Fiction Suggestions / Greg G.
Format Paperback
ISBN 9780385333511
Broad humor and bitter irony collide in this fictional autobiography of Rabo Karabekian, who, at age seventy-one, wants to be left alone on his Long Island estate with the secret he has locked inside his potato barn. But then a voluptuous young widow badgers Rabo into telling his life story—and Vonnegut in turn tells us the plain, heart-hammering truth about man’s careless fancy to create or destroy what he loves.
