Jeff's review
The Sirens of Titan
by Kurt Vonnegut
Jeff's review
The Sirens of Titan by Kurt Vonnegut
Jeff's review
rating:
bookshelves:
scifi
The Sirens of Titan is a rare masterwork, a novel with broad and varied powers. It is an elusive book that seeks you out, a panorama of arresting images, a cosmic drama played out across the galaxy and set in the devices of the future but capturing eternal beauty as though in indestructible stone. At its simplest, it is the story of Malachi Constant, who despite his egotistical intentions, endures mental and physical suffering, isolation, and the loss of his own identity in order to be reunited with the family he hardly knows. At the same time, it is an impossible, ridiculous, audacious tale that involves interplanetary war, breaking the laws of time and space, mind control, an atheist religion, and spaceships powered by Nietzschean metaphors. It takes an unimaginably deft touch to make this overreaching jumble of tone and genre work. For it not to be a mess is a major accomplishment, but the genius of this novel is that it enthralls. The tone is often absurd but never silly, com...more
