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Review: Welcome to the Monkey House by Kurt Vonnegut – Still in the monkey house


Collection: Political, Slice of Life, Dystopia. Contains violence, obscenity, and extremely disturbing situations.

 This was the first book I read by Kurt Vonnegut, my dad picked it up for me. I had already heard about while looking at a list of books regarding dystopian fiction (I tried to provide a link in this review but I'm afraid it didn't work).

Welcome to the Monkey house only has two or three dystopian stories, but since it was written during the cold war even the stories which aren't about a dystopian society have it as a fairly relevant theme.

The first real story (The actual first story is a description of Kurt’s home town) depicts a future where everyone is “equal”, and this is achieved by having handsome and beautiful people wear masks, strong people are forced to wear heavy weights, and smart people wear a radio that sits next to their ear and whenever they start forming a thought a sound blasts in their ear. Needless to say, I was immediately engrossed, the concept is so ridiculous but ridiculous in the best sense of the word. I love bizarre satire, stories where society is criticized by enlarging the problem and showing how an ideal would truly operate on a grand scale. 

Kurt knows how to do this, he can breathe real life into his characters, and can tell a good story while still providing excellent satire of the problems of the time (most of which are still relevant today). Even the ones which are not relevant are still good stories, "The Manned Missiles" is a very poignant story, despite being very much a part of its time. The collection has a wide variety of stories, "Long Walk to Forever" is one of the best romantic stories I have ever read, while “Tom Edison’s shaggy dog” and “Next door” are both sheer hilarity.

Vonnegut tells stories which feel like they actually happened. His characters are more than just that, they are real people. If you enjoy Kurt Vonnegut then I suggest you pick up this collection, if you enjoy collections of short stories then I also suggest you pick it up, Kurt can make hilarious stories with real heart to them. If you enjoy writing satire or want inspiration for interesting but realistic characters then pick up this book.

(If you missed my previous post this is the rating system that I will use for books) Awful - Bad - Good - Great - Brilliant

Welcome to the Monkey house = Good to Great

 Thank you for reading, and have a nice day!
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