BOOKS READ JANUARY 2021

Kurt Vonnegut: Slaughterhouse – Five or The Chidren’s Crusade: A Duty-Dance with Death, p/b, London, Vintage, 2000 (1969).

Cult anti-war novel made into an equally off beat film centring on the carpet bombing of the German city of Dresden by the British and US military over several days in February/March1945. Vonnegut fought with the US army in Europe and was captured and imprisoned in Dresden. The American POW’s were saved by retreating with their captors to the large underground meat abattoir beneath the huge meatworks.  Most of the rest of the city was completely destroyed by the fire-storms created by the carpet bombings.

Vonnegut tells his story of the destruction of Dresden through the eyes of the fictional Billy Pilgrim, a gentle assistant chaplain captured by the Germans alongside many other American soldiers and shipped by crowded train to a POW camp in Dresden, where their home prison meat works was called Slaughterhouse Number Five. 

Vonnegut’s style is easy to read, full of black cynical humour about American society, military leaders, serving US soldiers and interspersed with factual information about aspects of the last days of WW!1. Billy Pilgrim has been damaged psychologically by his capture and imprisonment, especially the lengthy train journey to Dresden and a later aircraft crash. He passes in and out of a fantasy involving memories of his civilian life as an optometrist and his marriage to the overweight Valencia Merbel,  his time in slaughterhouse five and after the bombing, and his interstellar life, having been captured by aliens from the far away planet  of Tralfamadore along with pawn filmstar Montana Wildhack where they perform and mate in a transparent earth vacuum cocoon as a visitor attraction daily for millions of Tralfamadorians who come to watch.

If all of this sounds totally ridiculous and silly it is saved by Vonnegut’s laconic humour, his icy barbs about the futility of much of American society and the sheer hopeless tragedy of human warfare.  4 stars.

Richard Surman: Cathedral Cats, h/b, London, HarperCollinsReligious, 1993

I am an unashamed cathedralophile and can sort of cope with cats although I dislike their taste for birds. Richard Surman is a world travelled photographer who has contributed photographs to many books from the USA to Greece and Britain.  This beautifully illustrated book links photographs and stories about cats and  cathedrals from many of England’s major cathedrals and their cats. The cathedrals include Bristol, Canterbury, Carlisle, Christ Church Oxford, Coventry, Ely, Gloucester, Hereford, Lincoln, Peterborough, St Albans, St Davids in Wales, St Paul’s, Salisbury, Truro, Wells, Westminster, Winchester, Worcester, and York. Some of these cats have had very adventurous lives indeed and others are just beautifully playful and domesticated. Surman takes the opportunity to comment on key features of many of the cathedrals which make them essential to the development and life of English history and architecture. A book to stay away from if your England tour was spoiled by “another bloody cathedral”! But a book to treasure if these places of faith and blessing continually amaze.   4 stars.