re:mote voices

Title: Cat's Cradle
Author: Kurt Vonnegut
Publisher:Vintage

This is the second book I have read by Kurt Vonnegut, finally getting round to filling the gap he represents in my reading. Like Slaughterhouse 5 before the brief description of what the book is about doesn’t really capture the idea of what it is about.

On the surface Cat’s Cradle is about a man who is writing a book about the day the world ended, which is as far as he is concerned the day the nuclear bomb was dropped on Japan. With this he is exploring the life of one of the bomb’s creators. In the process this leads him to the discovery that before he died the scientist created a new substance, one which could threaten to destroy the whole world.

However it quickly becomes apparent that Cat’s Cradle is also about an island and the religion that has developed there. A religion which is based on the things which link people in to unique groups. The main characters, the narrator, and the family of creator of the new substance, all forming one of these groups, which is inevitably attracted to this island and understanding of their connections.

It is more on this level that Vonnegut’s ideas fascinate, and yet frustratingly it feels like he could have filled a couple of extra hundred pages touching on these concepts. It is also through these ideas and the way that people interact through these ideas that we get an impression of a wit and humour at work, even if the results might be heading towards a catastrophic conclusion.

At less than 200 pages Cat’s Cradle is a short read, and one that I highly expect I’ll be reading again in the near future to provide a greater appreciation of just what he has done here.