God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater

When I was a teenager, I read - in hindsight, much too early in my life, a re-read is required - Kurt Vonnegut's Cat's Cradle. When I was 18 or so, in that period where I read so, so many good things, his Slaughterhouse Five landed second on my all-time list of favourite books, where it has remained to this day. A few years later on, I waded through the supremely bizarre Breakfast of Champions which, while fun, just seemed to be trying a bit too hard to follow Slaughterhouse Five.

And now onto God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater. Sitting neatly in Vonnegut's bibliography between Cat's Cradle and Slaughterhouse Five, it charts the life of unwilling billionaire Eliot Rosewater as he becomes disillusioned with New York high society and decides to relocate to a small town in Indiana, in a county named for his family, where he dispenses good advice and occasionally money to anyone who needs it. Elsewhere a scheming lawyer in the employment of Eliot's senator father decides that this behaviour is sufficient grounds for Eliot to be declared insane, whereupon his fortune will be handed back to the family - the lawyer standing to make a tidy profit in the process. And then we are introduced to another Rosewater family in Rhode Island, much less well off but in fact distantly related to Eliot, who would stand to inherit his fortune - if only Fred Rosewater would open up the family history that has been sitting unread on his shelf since the death of his father.

As Vonnegut novels go, this was remarkably normal. Without aliens popping up out of nowhere or sudden shifts in time to derail the narrative, as enjoyable as that is in his other works, God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater plants itself firmly in the real world, dealing with real problems - the distribution of wealth in America, the pressures of the class system, the little neuroses that go unchecked and build to something more in pretty much everyone. It belies the book's 1965 publication date that, quite clearly, it's not Eliot who is insane but society, man. Yet for all the political jabs that Vonnegut aims at the higher-ups and the working class alike, the overall tone is really quite soft. Yes it's still a cynical book, like all the rest; but it's a much gentler, more world-weary (or perhaps even optimistic) cynicism - laced with the feeling that answers to all these problems can be found, if only everyone would stop navel-gazing for a minute. And Vonnegut throws in profound pearls of wisdom at an almost comical rate, right up until the surprisingly happy ending.

So while God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater isn't as well remembered as a lot of Vonnegut's other books, for me it sits up there with the best. It's thought-provoking, funny, sad and does a sterling job of restoring faith in human nature.

4.5/5

Essentially, this.