Howdy new subscribers. This is Letters from Home & Away, written by Kate Lucky and Ali Montag. We’re journalists, writers, readers, and buddies. We used to live ten blocks apart. We used to stop by each other’s apartments to exchange books, laugh at Twitter, and drink big cups of coffee.
Now, we’re stuck 1,100 miles apart.
We’re using this Substack to send each other letters from home and away, from the places we travel and the places we return to.
Each Tuesday, we recommend a book we’ve just finished reading.
Dear Kate,
I finally read Kurt Vonnegut’s 1969 novel Slaughterhouse-Five. I read it the same way I eat Dairy Queen blizzards: no stopping. No breaks. Just more, and more, and more until I have a stomachache. It’s good. Oh boy, it’s good. But then it hurts.
It might be the best book I’ve read in a decade.
But it hurts.
It’s about World War II. It’s about making sense of things that are senseless.
Vonnegut fought in World War II as a 22-year-old and witnessed the fire bombing of Dresden, one of the most controversial attacks in the war. Thousands of civilians, artists, and refugees died. Vonnegut survived underground in a meat locker. The address for his shelter was Schlachthof Fünf, Slaughterhouse-Five.
If you’re looking for a novel to read this week, I can’t recommend Vonnegut enough. This is a helpful—and even funny—book about what to do when no one has any idea what to do. It’s also a reminder that the wold has witnessed terrible, senseless things before. Vonnegut tries to make sense of what happened in Dresden, why it happened, and what it meant.
We can do that too. We must do that too. Even if it hurts.
The book: Slaughterhouse-Five
My rating: 👏👏👏👏👏 (five out of five)
Read More: The New Yorker
Note to readers: If you pick up a copy of any of our recommendations and want to chat, email us at lettersfromhomeandaway@gmail.com. Happy reading!