Vonnegut is a genius. He decided to write a book about war but found it to be such a horrid meaningless void that he tried to escape its literary fate by writing about life instead, and it somehow worked.

It’s this deep emotional journey through vignettes that search for an explanation that could make it all click, some sort of redeeming answer for the horrors of war he was a witness of, to no avail, for, as Vonnegut himself put it, there's nothing interesting to say about a massacre.

Some have accused it of being "quietist" or confidently incorrect about some its philosophical propositions, but I am not sure if Vonnegut himself would agree with the characters of his book. The pleasure of the reading arrives less with its intelectual powerhouse and more so with the emotional experience that weaves out of Billy’s dull voyage in life, forever a prisoner of the tragedies that chain him to the past.

It's the best book of its kind I've read. I'm not sure what its kind is, though...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LQiOA7euaYA