Published: 1985Author: Kurt VonnegutRead: 2021-01-06Rating: 3/5

Galapagos

Eh it was fine. My first Vonnegut so perhaps I need to warm to him to really "get" it. The first third of the book I thought was quirky and funny. I enjoyed the farcical situations the characters were going through and the bits of the ending that were scattered throughout as dry punchlines. However there was a bit too much of it. By the halfway mark things were getting tedious, and so much had been revealed that the entirety of the final third was completely underwhelming. Moreover, the blurb of the book tells the entire story. I mean literally the whole plot.

A wacky tale about the end of mankind. Our group of characters are marooned on an island in the Galapagos through their own incompetence, accidentally saving the human race by being the only ones to avoid a virus that causes infertility. One million years later they have evolved to lose their trouble-making big brains (the main point in the book, repeated ad nauseam) and developed furry skins and flippers to become fisher-people.

Can't say I would recommend. If it hadn't been part of a book club I'm not sure I would have finished it. Perhaps after reading Slaughterhouse 5 or something I'll come back to this book with a different view. But I won't be rushing to do that any time soon.