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here's been a timequake. And everyone--even you--must live the decade between February 17, 1991 and February 17, 2001 over again. The trick is that we all have to do exactly the same things as we did the first time--minute by minute, hour by hour, year by year, betting on the wrong horse again, marrying the wrong person again. Why? You'll have to ask the old science fiction writer, Kilgore Trout. This was all his idea.

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First Sentence:
Call me Junior. Read the first page

Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs): (learn more)
steel front door, cat drug

Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
Kilgore Trout, Dudley Prince, New York, World War Two, Monica Pepper, Timequake One, Great Depression, Zoltan Pepper, Abraham Lincoln, Museum of the American Indian, Cape Cod, Ernest Hemingway, Albert Hardy, Joys Pride, University of Chicago, Christmas Eve, Frank Smith, Jesus Christ, John Wilkes Booth, Kilgore's Creed, Our Town, Peter Lieber, Shortridge High School, Soviet Union, Western Civilization

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192 Reviews

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3.9 out of 5 stars (192 customer reviews)

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65 of 66 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Novelist Emeritus, November 18, 2005

By	My Uncle Stu (Boston) - See all my reviews (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)

This review is from: Timequake (Paperback)

Anyone who has had enough education has likely run into the phenomenon of the elderly professor, someone widely known to have been a genius, revolutionary in his time, who is no longer quite on their game. Usually, these people are fascinating and worth listening to because of what they've accomplished and been part of, but they aren't teaching anything new. You listen, but you listen more with polite deference than with interest. You laugh at the jokes but it is that respectful, polite laughter. You recognize that the delivery is a little soft.

I love Kurt Vonnegut. I have read almost everything he has written. Time Quake is worth reading, but is not the book to pick up if you aren't a huge fan already and if you haven't exhausted all his earlier works. He tells us in the introduction that he began to write a novel but it wasn't working out, so he jumbled it around and mixed it in with autobiographical details. This is not that much different from what he has always done, but at this point, as novelist emeritus, he can get away with doing this in a cruder fashion, lighter reading, low on nuance.

Just as Mozart wrote the same symphony 40 different times, Vonnegut has written the same semi-autobiographic, semi-sci-fi novel 19 times. This isn't a criticism. In both cases, Mozart and Vonnegut, you know what you are getting, it's great, well worth it, and you go back for more knowing it will be very much more of the same. The message is always there in Vonnegut: Free will is largely an illusion, life is a meaningless and often cruel series of stochastic events, but that everything connects through the chaos of chance. But once the cruelty and meaninglessness of the universe is accepted, one can also appreciate remarkable wonder and joy beneath the surface.

So buy and read this book if you are a big fan, but this is not the book to buy if you are just getting introduced to Vonnegut's writings. For starter Vonnegut, I know people would say Slaughterhouse-Five but I'm partial to Cat's Cradle, Deadeye Dick, and Slastick for novels, Palm Sunday for essays, and Welcome to the Monkey House for short stories.

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27 of 27 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Misunderstood Classic, October 13, 2002

By	Caesar (college) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Timequake (Paperback)

...Upon it's release, "Timequake" was hailed as Vonnegut's final novel (and it may very well be). He had been writing it on and off for ten years, and after a series of rewrites and revisions, he admitted that the book ultimately failed. Therefore, the original sci-fi premise--the events surrounding a 'glitch' in time that causes people to relive episodes of their lives over and over again--becomes merely a sidelining plot, whereas Vonnegut's often pessimistic reflections on his life, career, family, and existence in general, becomes the main focus of this semi-autobiographical book.

So in addition to revisiting Vonnegut's fictional alter-ego, Kilgore Trout, we witness Vonnegut in his everyday life and his struggle to write a novel doomed to fail. The result is a classic collection of Vonnegut's combination of humor with heartbreak that has defined his written career of the past half-century.

For Vonnegut's many devoted readers, including myself, "Timequake" is a difficult book to read. We know it is a farewell to his fans. It is also an emotional read, since our hero is often critical of himself, and not in the lighthearted sense of his earlier novels. He is old, he is ill, he is bitter. When so many people consider him to be one of the greatest novelists America has produced, he seems to view himself as a failure...instead of ending his career with a crowning achievement, he chooses to quietly wave and step out the back door.

Nonetheless, Vonnegut's incomparable talent makes this an excellent book. However, one should not rate this book without first becoming familiar with his earlier work. Only then can it be appreciated as the ingenious conclusion to an illustrious career.

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17 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars If you are a fan of Vonnegut's ideas, you'll enjoy this., January 26, 1998

By	KlgreTrout@aol.com "klgretrout" (Denver Colorado) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Timequake (Hardcover)

If you are looking for a plot, rising action or deep characters, don't read this. For those of us who have been Vonnegut fans, it reads like a Bible of his ideas. The best parts of a good number of his novels are the prologues. This book is a 195 page prologue, with about 10 pages of fiction. I had the opportunity to read Timequake back in July, (about three months before its offical release date) and I was thrilled when I reached the final page. Many of his devoted readers find his humanistic ideas to be the best stuff he writes. This book holds more of that than any other he has written. His ideas on his own age and demise as a writer add a ton to this beautiful farewell to the philosophy of Kurt Vonnegut. If you are unfamilar with him, and looking for a great book to start on, go back to Slaughterhouse-Five, Sirens of Titan or Cat's Cradle. If you are familiar with his stuff, this book simply serves as a great companion piece to his other books.

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Most Recent Customer Reviews

4.0 out of 5 stars Vonnegut being Vonnegut
I'll have to say I liked it. But I like Kurt Vonnegut, so I'm biased.

It's a solid story, and Vonnegut once again amazes with his ability to avoid a mainstream story... Read more

Published 2 months ago by William J. Kaluzny

2.0 out of 5 stars Ramblings
Ramblings. That about sums up this novel.

It's really unfortunate. I love Vonnegut and consider him to be up there with the greats of the 20th century. Read more

Published 3 months ago by CT

5.0 out of 5 stars Coda
With "Timequake", Vonnegut's final novel, he is clearly looking backward. When the universe stops expanding, everyone on the planet is forced to relive the last ten years of their... Read more

Published 22 months ago by Douglas King

5.0 out of 5 stars A master's hand
TIMEQUAKE is Vonnegut's most explicitly autobiographical novel. More precisely, for fifty years he has blurred the line between his own life, that of his alter-ego Kilgore Trout,... Read more

Published 23 months ago by Cecil Bothwell

3.0 out of 5 stars Cosmic Author Rip-Off
Readers may be interested to learn that in chapter 63 of "Timequake" a speech given to the character Kilgore Trout (Vonnegut's parody version of Theodore Sturgeon) was clearly... Read more

Published on September 28, 2007 by G. WEINBERG-HARTER

4.0 out of 5 stars Did I Miss Something? No, This Book is Just Awesome
This was only the second book by Vonnegut I have read. I bought this and Slaughterhouse 5 the day he died. Thinking, oh man that sucks he died, I never read anything by him. Read more

Published on August 19, 2007 by Peter Stickney

4.0 out of 5 stars Shaken, Not Stirred
Don't be fooled by the "plot" descriptions of a "timequake" making everyone have to do the same things over again from the last ten years. Read more

Published on July 16, 2007 by BJ Fraser

4.0 out of 5 stars what if
...and just what would happen if we had to repeat the 1970s all over again. And couldn't change a thing. Read more

Published on June 20, 2007 by J. McHoul

5.0 out of 5 stars Thank you, Mr. Vonnegut, for a Wonderful Book.
Kurt Vonnegut is a science fiction writer the way I'm a water drinker, it just isn't sufficient definition. Read more

Published on March 24, 2007 by CV Rick

4.0 out of 5 stars ting-a-ling
Vonnegut is sardonic in a way that's touching because I can't disagree with it. This novel is a hodgepodge of autobiographical detail and story fragments from Kilgore Trout's My... Read more

Published on March 20, 2007 by jqln

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