Mother Night

While Mother Night is still distinctly and definitely written by Kurt Vonnegut, it is without a doubt the least Vonnegut-like of his novels that I've read. By that I mean it doesn't have a lot of the calling cards of his other books. There aren't any science fiction elements, it's not overtly satirical, and it's also not particularly funny. There are a few instances of brutally dark humor, but they're pretty sparse. He's obviously done other relatively serious stories, but even Slaughterhouse-Five was fairly odd in places. Mother Night is very grounded and serious as it tells a story with what he calls the one one of his with a moral, and it's one that shines through the entire time.

Mother Night is about an American-born member of the Nazi party facing trial in Israel. The first few chapters introducing his living space and the various men who keep him under guard, and the novel is written as though it is a work that doubles as both his autobiography and his defense. He was a minister of propaganda in English, and claims he was hired by the government to use his platform to deliver secret messages to the allies. He has no proof of this however, and the situation doesn't look good. While his broadcasts may have had an ulterior motive that helped the war effort, they were also filled with vitriolic hate speech as they were supposed to, speech which definitely pushed the Nazi agenda and assisted their goals. The question isn't even which side he helped more. If he spoke so well for the Nazis, does it really matter why he was saying it?

The story jumps around in time quite a bit, revealing details as necessary and giving a good overview of an interesting life in a way that makes it hard to put the book down. It's an extremely quick read, one I finished in two days, and a very fulfilling one too. Some of the material is a bit difficult content-wise, but it all plays into what may be my favorite work by Vonnegut so far. It's chilling, surprising, and thought provoking. And the ending is perfect in its harshness, unexpected at first but ultimately the only way that it could have ended appropriately. I enjoy Vonnegut when he's being silly, but this is altogether something else.