Mother Night
by Kurt Vonnegut
|
|
Sign in to Goodreads to see your friends' reviews of Mother Night.
discuss this book
friend reviews (0)
To see what your friends thought of this book, please sign up.
other reviews (showing 1-20 of 4417)
This is my FAVORITE vonnegut book which is weird because it is not as quintessentially vonnegut as the other books on my list. however, i love the context (and i can actually talk about it here because it has a reasonable plotline).. It is about different characters and different roles people played in nazi germany. and one of the major ideas in it is: "you are who you pretend to be so be careful who you pretend to be" which is such a great concept. Who are we but the actions we ta...more
Like this review?
yes
add a comment
Read in November, 2006
recommends it for:
Vonnegut fans, WWII interest, black humor
I was convinced that Howard Campbell truly wrote this book, save for a few characteristic writing habits which serve as Vonnegut's stylistic signature. I thought the concept was ingenius and hilarious in that way that makes you cry and laugh at the same time. A beautiful tragedy, and a narrator who makes no attempt to save himself from a fate he readily accepts though he nowhere appeals to the regime he served the same way he appeals to his underlying secret mission, from which he seemingly neve...more
Like this review?
yes
add a comment
Read in January, 1998
We must be careful what we pretend to be, because in the end we are what we pretend to be. This is the moral of Vonnegut's darkest novel, the autobiography of Howard W. Campbell, Jr. an American ex-patriot who is a successful German-language playwright-turned-spy for the U.S. In order to serve his mission to the American side he has to serve the Nazis, and Vonnegut uses this paradoxical situation to explore human morality, as the reader deals with Campbell's post-war years living in exile in N...more
Like this review?
yes
add a comment
Read in February, 2005
recommends it for:
everyone
This is one of my favorite books. I picked this book up and read it through in one sitting. I couldn't put it down I was so engaged.
This book presents the moral dilemma of Howard W. Campbell Jr. an American who became a Nazi propagandist. However, he only became a Nazi propagandist because he was spying for the USA. Yet, he was a really good propagandist. His dilemma is this: Does the good of spying for America obviate and out weigh the evils he did by making propaganda for the Nazis ...more
This book presents the moral dilemma of Howard W. Campbell Jr. an American who became a Nazi propagandist. However, he only became a Nazi propagandist because he was spying for the USA. Yet, he was a really good propagandist. His dilemma is this: Does the good of spying for America obviate and out weigh the evils he did by making propaganda for the Nazis ...more
Like this review?
yes
(2 people liked it)
add a comment
Read in February, 2008
In the Vonnegut spirit, this book presents an interesting human dilemma, poses a question that makes you think. And it's clever and dark and egdy even. My problem with Vonnegut is that I always feels like he is undersentimentalizing things. I don;t like over-romanticizing or drama that's not justified or well-created, but with Vonnegut, it's always the opposite. Like as I read, I wonder why he has to be so ?callous or unsentimental about the topic...because the topic does always seem to warran...more
Like this review?
yes
add a comment
Read in November, 2007
I have always enjoyed the way that Vonnegut sees the world, and his books, while written with well-formed characters and usually somewhat interesting plot-lines, have always struck me as 'idea' books. This book had a lot of ideas in it. They made me think, and usually I liked the way they directed my thoughts.
This is one of my favorite Vonnegut novels. It's something about how likable Campbell is, even at his very worst. About how the one thing he can say about himself with pride is that he...more
This is one of my favorite Vonnegut novels. It's something about how likable Campbell is, even at his very worst. About how the one thing he can say about himself with pride is that he...more
Like this review?
yes
(1 person liked it)
add a comment
in tight witty prose vonnegut relays the tale of a disenchanted american idealist and writer caught in the throws of WWII Nazi Germany who makes it safely through the war by "impersonating" a Nazi propogandist so succesfully as to rise to the top of the Nazi ranks and become loathed throughout the world all while believing nothing of what he says and serving secretly as an American spy. Is this man good? Evil? Merely human? Kurt knows. Let him tell you the rest. This book rocked....more
Like this review?
yes
(1 person liked it)
add a comment
I'm a sucker for Mother Night. I'm not a huge Vonnegut fan, as I find most of his works intentionally unpredictable, and therefore very predictable. He also seems to have gotten every idea of his out of his system by the 5th book or so, and every book after that is just a rehash of the same philosophy. But man, this book just rocks.
It doesn't even feel like a Vonnegut plot. Normally, the concepts in his stories are ragtag strings of ideas yanked together because they sound good to him "...more
It doesn't even feel like a Vonnegut plot. Normally, the concepts in his stories are ragtag strings of ideas yanked together because they sound good to him "...more
Like this review?
yes
add a comment
Read in June, 2006
recommends it for:
Everyone
In a beautiful allegory of human duality, Vonnegut presents us with a character wavering on two worlds: pre-WWII and post-war; good and evil; certainty and ambiguity; past and present; life and death. As an American spy during the war, the main character is now faced with the ambivalence of whether he helped the Allies more than Germany, and if his civic responsibility was anything more than self-serving. Vonnegut delves deep into the psychological repercussions of ethical decisions, and society...more
Like this review?
yes
(1 person liked it)
add a comment
Read in February, 2007
My Vonnegut curiousity aroused, I headed for this next.
I was not disappointed - this, again, is great stuff.
I love the crossover of characters in Vonnegut's oeuvre - Campbell's presence in Slaughterhouse 5 brought me to this, as Kilgore Trout's would take me to Breakfast of Champions. I love this idea of a little world in the author's head, where the characters aren't actors, they're real people. And they go on living, and they interact with each other.
Anyway, this is very dark, but ve...more
I was not disappointed - this, again, is great stuff.
I love the crossover of characters in Vonnegut's oeuvre - Campbell's presence in Slaughterhouse 5 brought me to this, as Kilgore Trout's would take me to Breakfast of Champions. I love this idea of a little world in the author's head, where the characters aren't actors, they're real people. And they go on living, and they interact with each other.
Anyway, this is very dark, but ve...more
Like this review?
yes
add a comment
Read in March, 2008
I love Vonnegut.
Like all of Vonnegut's books that touch upon religion, free thinking, and the senseless act of war, at the end of the day, he speaks of the common bond that keeps us going -- LOVE. Alternatively, the lack of love provides no hope for the future.
This book made me a sad, but it's truthfulness at its very core is what makes me love Vonnegut's style. It can be said that Mother Night is the classic love story in the sense that he describes soulmates to be a "nation of two...more
Like all of Vonnegut's books that touch upon religion, free thinking, and the senseless act of war, at the end of the day, he speaks of the common bond that keeps us going -- LOVE. Alternatively, the lack of love provides no hope for the future.
This book made me a sad, but it's truthfulness at its very core is what makes me love Vonnegut's style. It can be said that Mother Night is the classic love story in the sense that he describes soulmates to be a "nation of two...more
Like this review?
yes
add a comment
Read in May, 2007
My fiction choice for the KV Memorial Reading Project [May 2007]... not one of my favorites. I can't quite recall if I'd read it before or not; but I'm not certain I'd read it again.
Howard W. Campbell - WWII war criminal but was in reality a deep-cover spy for the US. His vitriolic Anti-Semite radio shows were admired both by the Germans and the KKK-types who contacted him after the war - including "The Black Fuhrer" and a defrocked Catholic priest. He is rediscovered by the autho...more
Howard W. Campbell - WWII war criminal but was in reality a deep-cover spy for the US. His vitriolic Anti-Semite radio shows were admired both by the Germans and the KKK-types who contacted him after the war - including "The Black Fuhrer" and a defrocked Catholic priest. He is rediscovered by the autho...more
Like this review?
yes
add a comment
Of all the Vonnegut novels, Mother Night is probably the only one that works better as a film than a book. The double themes and somber mood are somewhat easier to watch, and the subtle tones that make the plot work are somehow more poignant when shaped by an actor.
Nevertheless, the quality of the novel is equally as good as the rest of Vonnegut’s work, even though he’s exploring an unorthodox protagonist’s secretive life in Nazi Germany. Beyond the general quirky attributes that youâ...more
Nevertheless, the quality of the novel is equally as good as the rest of Vonnegut’s work, even though he’s exploring an unorthodox protagonist’s secretive life in Nazi Germany. Beyond the general quirky attributes that youâ...more
Like this review?
yes
add a comment
Read in June, 2007
My dad got me on a Kurt Vonnegut kick this summer. I've never read anything by him before, but wow, this one was an interesting start. It follows, through his own eyes, an American spy during WWII who was embedded in the Nazi propaganda department, on trial some twenty years later in Israel for war crimes. Since he was a top-secret kind of spy, no one can testify that he was actually working for the Allies. But the underlying question that he is asking himself throughout this book is, did he...more
Like this review?
yes
add a comment
Read in April, 2008
i read this book in one go today, while traveling from baton rouge to dallas.
i've owned this book for at least a year, but have been leery of reading it due to the bizarre cover art (which goodreads doesn't appear to have on file; it features a midget riding a wiener dog and carrying a nazi flag).
this cover art is strangely appropriate: mother night is the story of an american spy posing as a nazi propagandist who assumes his cover so effectively that after the war, he is more or less u...more
i've owned this book for at least a year, but have been leery of reading it due to the bizarre cover art (which goodreads doesn't appear to have on file; it features a midget riding a wiener dog and carrying a nazi flag).
this cover art is strangely appropriate: mother night is the story of an american spy posing as a nazi propagandist who assumes his cover so effectively that after the war, he is more or less u...more
Like this review?
yes
add a comment
Read in May, 2007
recommends it for:
someone wanting to laugh at the, often, absurdity of national borders and war
I enjoyed this one. It was an extrememly fast read dealing, primarily, with lengths a person will go to to be somebody that they are not, or perhaps exactly what they are when there are no obvious and immidiate consequences for those actions.
To accomplish this, Vonnegut uses World War 2 as a backdrop for a tale of backstabbing and espionage that leads the protagonist down bitter memory lane, where he is forced to question exactly what the hell he did during the darkest years of the war. ...more
To accomplish this, Vonnegut uses World War 2 as a backdrop for a tale of backstabbing and espionage that leads the protagonist down bitter memory lane, where he is forced to question exactly what the hell he did during the darkest years of the war. ...more
Like this review?
yes
add a comment
Read in May, 2007
Funny, entertaining, and very, very sad at the same time. It's written from the perspective of Howard Campbell, an American who stayed in Germany during World War II and worked as a Nazi propagandist, as he sits in an Israeli jail cell awaiting trial for war crimes.
It's one of the best attempts at explaining the madness of the war that I've read, and addresses, I think, broader ideas than Slaughterhouse V, which you can't but help comparing it to. There are fewer passages that blow you away...more
It's one of the best attempts at explaining the madness of the war that I've read, and addresses, I think, broader ideas than Slaughterhouse V, which you can't but help comparing it to. There are fewer passages that blow you away...more
Like this review?
yes
add a comment
Totally unlike any other book Vonnegut wrote. Absolutely heart breaking, funny, and dramatic. Really, among the peaks of character study in 20th century fiction. This novel also being one of the rare instances where Vonnegut gets romantic with his concept of "the nation of two." Mother Night is Vonnegutian prose in its purest form.
Here lies Howard Campbell’s essence,
Freed from his body’s noisome nuisance.
His body, empty, prowls the earth,
Earning what a body’s worth.
I...more
Here lies Howard Campbell’s essence,
Freed from his body’s noisome nuisance.
His body, empty, prowls the earth,
Earning what a body’s worth.
I...more
Like this review?
yes
add a comment
Read in December, 2007
Mother Night is my favorite Vonnegut novel so far. The theme that, in a way, we are or become what we pretend to be really resonated with me. Vonnegut’s novel has a bigger-than-life character to communicate this theme: a Nazi propagandist that was previously a U.S spy. I believe that this theme could hit home for the any-man, as well. As human beings search to define themselves, they gradually become who they are by how those around them perceive them to be. In the end, it is peoples' actions ...more
Like this review?
yes
add a comment
Probably one of the most brilliant insights into the human psyche and the good and evil that potentially resides in all of us. The portrait of Howard W. Campbell Jr. at once captivates you as a reader, as Campbell is someone we can identify with but are at the same time entirely revulsed by.
The sarcasm, dark humor, and commentary about evil and the human mind is remarkable. Vonnegut's explanation of the "Totalitarian mind" in the novel is probably one of the most brilliantly wr...more
The sarcasm, dark humor, and commentary about evil and the human mind is remarkable. Vonnegut's explanation of the "Totalitarian mind" in the novel is probably one of the most brilliantly wr...more
Like this review?
yes
add a comment
book data (includes all editions)
avg rating (all editions): 4.09 (3881 ratings) avg rating (this edition): 4.09 (3766 ratings) number of reviews: 182popular shelves
other editions
quote
"We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be."
more quotes »