Kurt Vonnegut's The Sirens of Titan is one such book. Published in 1959, his second work is generally considered his first great novel, following the patchy Player Piano. And I have to admit that I chose it mostly based on its impressive Amazon rating. But that's as good a reason as any, and I quickly found that, once again, I felt compelled to agree with popular opinion.
The Sirens of Titan really is Vonnegut at his best - already a high bar to meet. It traces the fortunes of one Malachi Constant, the son of a billionaire Wall Street trader who made his money based on luck alone, after he is invited to the home of a reclusive aristocrat who appears every few weeks before disappearing into thin air after a few minutes. The aristocrat, Winston Niles Rumfoord (Vonnegut does have a talent for memorable names), famous for having been the first man to set out into space for the purpose of exploration alone, explains to Malachi that his appearances are a result of his having flown into a "chrono-synclastic infundibulum" near Mars, something similar to a black hole that has strung out his (and his dog's) existence across the Solar System and through all time. As a result he can see everything that has been and that will be, and informs Malachi that he will travel to Mars, where he will have a child with Rumfoord's wife, then to Mercury, then back to Earth and finally to Saturn's moon Titan, where Rumfoord himself has been primarily based since his accident, in the company of his alien friend Salo.
There follows a series of adventures whereby Malachi does his utmost to avoid all of these events but finds himself involved in them anyway. He makes a point of not going to Mars by refusing to go near the only active rocket in the world, but ends up being kidnapped by aliens and taken there anyway to serve in Mars's army - and the same goes for Rumfoord's wife Beatrice, who does indeed end up giving birth to Malachi's child en route. He believes travelling to Mercury to be an impossibility as the Martian army prepares to invade Earth, but his ship has been reprogrammed by Rumfoord - head of the army - to take him there regardless. A good thing too, as the invasion fails spectacularly and nearly everyone is killed. He is then recalled to Earth to act as the messiah figure of Rumfoord's new religion, created to unite humanity following the first conflict in which the world truly united against a common enemy. So Rumfoord was pulling the strings all along. But here comes the twist - as he sends Malachi, Beatrice and their son Chrono on their way to live out the rest of their days on Titan, it transpires that Rumfoord himself - and the rest of the human race - were merely part of an extremely elaborate plan to deliver a replacement part for Salo's broken-down spaceship.
The Sirens of Titan is just an ingeniously written book. Its style is as simple as it gets - sentences, paragraphs and even chapters condensed down to be as short as possible, and yet conveying so much with so little. Roald Dahl would be a good comparison, and that's not intended as a criticism of either writer. The tone ranges from hauntingly poetic to bluntly ironic, and there are laughs to be had as well. Which is good because we're dealing with some pretty heavy subject matter here - ideas of predestination, free will, what it means to be human and the importance of humanity. Vonnegut wraps all of this up into a level of prose that could be read by a child, and yet a child reader would miss a lot. In fact, I'm sure I did as well - it's one of those books where the ending realigns everything you thought you knew leading up to it.
A brilliant reminder of the power of the written word in the right hands, and a book that demands another read. It's not quite as good as Slaughterhouse Five, but that's in my top three books of all time - and this really isn't far off.
5/5, and well deserved.
When it comes to doing a lot with a little, it doesn't get much better than these fellow mid-western minimalists:
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