- Jubilee offer: spend £10 or more on any product sold by Amazon.co.uk on or before June 6 and you can buy The Diamond Jubilee A Classical Celebration Album for just £2.50 Here's how (terms and conditions apply)
Jailbird (Kurt Vonnegut Series)
and over one million other books are available for Amazon Kindle .
Learn more
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
 Trade In this Item for up to £0.25
Get an extra £5 when you trade in books worth £10 or more until June 30, 2012. Trade in Jailbird for an Amazon.co.uk gift card of up to £0.25, which you can then spend on millions of items across the site. Trade-in values may vary (terms apply). Find more products eligible for trade-in.
|
Special Offers and Product Promotions
Frequently Bought Together
Product details
|
More About the Author
Product Description
Book Description
Jailbird is Vonnegut's riotous urban fairytale about the various fiascos of the Nixon years
Product Description
Pay attention please to the life of Walter F. Starbuck. Nineteen-hundred and Thirteen gave him the gift of life. Nineteenth-hundred and Thirty-one sent him to Harvard. Nineteen-hundred and Thirty-eight got him a job in the federal government. Nineteen-hundred and Seventy gave him a job in the Nixon White House. Nineteen-hundred and Seventy-five sent him to prison for his part in the American political scandals known collectively as 'Watergate'.
Now Walter F. Starbuck is coming out of jail, into the brave new world of 1980s Manhattan, and this is the story of his first twenty-four hours of freedom.
Inside This Book
(Learn More)
Tags Customers Associate with This Product(What's this?)Click on a tag to find related items, discussions, and people.
|
What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?
Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
I'm a big Kurt Vonnegut fan having read several of his books and I reckon that this is one of his best, and one of his funniest.
We follow Walter F. Starbuck on his first 24 hours after being released from prison as he becomes subjected to a series of comical coincidences and often farcical events, interspersed with flashbacks to his past. The tale unravels into several threads and Vonnegut skillfully weaves them together to form a satisfying whole. It is Vonnegut's genius that he can create a novel of complexity, and full of ideas, yet make it read so easily and entertainingly.
For those unfamiliar with Kurt Vonnegut, I would say his style is such that his books have a certain _personality_ to them, and once you become aquainted with this personality you can sit back and enjoy them like you were listening to the conversation of an old friend. But first you must be introduced, and in my opinion Jailbird is a great introduction.
SGL
We follow Walter F. Starbuck on his first 24 hours after being released from prison as he becomes subjected to a series of comical coincidences and often farcical events, interspersed with flashbacks to his past. The tale unravels into several threads and Vonnegut skillfully weaves them together to form a satisfying whole. It is Vonnegut's genius that he can create a novel of complexity, and full of ideas, yet make it read so easily and entertainingly.
For those unfamiliar with Kurt Vonnegut, I would say his style is such that his books have a certain _personality_ to them, and once you become aquainted with this personality you can sit back and enjoy them like you were listening to the conversation of an old friend. But first you must be introduced, and in my opinion Jailbird is a great introduction.
SGL
6 of 7 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Yet another Vonnegut that nudges at perfection. Reminiscent of Mother Night and Hocus Pocus, this is the biography of a low-ranking participant in the Watergate scandal and a punchy morality tale on the vertigo of history and the failings of American capitalism. Full of wonderful jokes and characters, this is ground the master could re-tread again and again, extending the joy available to the rest of us each time. It's a real pity that there's not a flashier version of this out in the bookstores of the world at the moment. It's worth your time and your money. It will make you glow.
8 of 10 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Kurt Vonnegut can be harmful to your social life. So many people stumble across one of his novels, love it, and then spend much of their subsequent time acquiring the rest of his work, whilst persistently recommending others do the same with almost evangelical zeal. I too have been there.
So speaking as a fan, I'd have to say I was a wee bit dissapointed by Jailbird. It does have some of the virtues familiar to all Vonnegut's work: it's cynical yet compassionate, humanistic and a decent entertaining read. However, this bleak portrayal of people being lost and ignored among the ubiquitous forces of greed and corruption lacks the levity associated with much of the author's other work. I realise jokes aren't everything, but Vonnegut is often at his most incisive when mocking his targets with the aid of plenty black humour (as in Breakfast of Champions, for example).
So ultimately, Jailbird comes across as rather depressing. Perhaps it's because of the protagonist's perception of himself as a pathetically ineffectual nothing-man. Or perhaps it's because Vonnegut's pessimism got the better of him this time around.
Despite the above, I'd say Jailbird is certainly worth investigating, but if you aren't a fan of the author (yet!), it's probably best to start with another of his novels.
Would you like to see more reviews about this item?
Were these reviews helpful?
Let us know
Customer Discussions
|
This product's forum
Active discussions in related forums
Search Customer Discussions
|
Related forums
|
Listmania!
|
|
Look for similar items by category
Look for similar items by subject
Feedback
- Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
- I am the Author, and I want to comment on my book.
- I am the Publisher, and I want to comment on this book.
|
