Timequake 82
Timequake explores the idea of free will and how it affects our lives in this modern age. Set against an interesting idea — a "blip" in time causes everyone to go back ten years and re-live those years exactly as they did the first time, the only difference being that they now know what's going to happen and can think different thoughts, etc.
By Kurt Vonnegut
Fiction, Berkley Publishing Group, 1998
ISBN: 0425164349
I have been reading a lot of Vonnegut, lately and have yet to review any of his work so this may be, partially, a review of overall impressions of several books rather than on this single work, however because many of Vonnegut's stories are relatively interchangeable in their message and tone, I don't feel I am doing any great disservice here.
Timequake explores the idea of free will and how it affects our lives in this modern age. Set against an interesting idea — a "blip" in time causes everyone to go back ten years and re-live those years exactly as they did the first time, the only difference being that they now know what's going to happen and can think different thoughts, etc. (they just can't say or do anything differently).
Mr. Vonnegut is able, with only the slightest of stories, to provide more insight into how we should live, or how some get it wrong, or some such truths, that he seems to be rubbing it in the faces of lesser writers who must write an entire book to eke out even one such moral. The pages of Timequake are littered with nuggets of wisdom, that are circled back to from time to time in a sort of spiral that is common in Vonnegut’s works. Like other such short stories (and, I believe, nearly all of his books) Timequake reads (or sounds, in the case of an audiobook) like a conversation with the author, and I do believe that if I ever had the chance to sit with him, he would tell many a story, in just the same ways he does in his books. His voice would be consistent, his narrative – all over the place, and his wisdom, keen. Should you read Timequake you should expect no more, or less.
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