Review: Welcome to the Monkey House by Kurt Vonnegut

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Welcome to the Monkey House by Kurt Vonnegut


My rating: 4 of 5 stars
A bit of a mixed bag, although even the weakest stories in this collection are entertaining. It's a good collection to read to give you an idea of Vonnegut's range as a writer, and it includes many of his well-known stories. (It was nice to finally read "Harrison Bergeron", which I've heard about for years, but don't think I'd ever actually read.)

I didn't much care for the title story, "Welcome to the Monkey House," which I thought was both trite in its message and generally unpleasant. (It's set in a society that represses sex, so the brave resistance group kidnaps women and rapes them. Er. Might want to rethink that one, pal.) On the other hand, "All the Kings Men," a story in which a military office must play a game of chess for the lives of his family and the men under his command, really impressed me for how tense and suspenseful it was.

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