I always enter a Vonnegut book with a mix of hope and trepidation. He has written two novels I think are hilarious, Cat's Cradle and Slapstick, and some brilliant short stories, but the other books I've read have ranged from mildly interesting Slaughterhouse-Five to wretched (God Bless You Mr. Rosewater), and many I've started and then given up on.

Jailbird falls somewhere between Slaughterhouse-Five and GBYMR in my esteem. It's a short but shambling book with some interesting moments, but there's not much to it. Often it feels like a set of notes for a book Vonnegut was planning to write later on. The lead character isn't especially interesting, and no one he meets is either.

Vonnegut is often interested in the futility of action, but this book feels so futile that it doesn't seem to have been worth starting. At the end, I felt I was left with nothing except a hole where my time used to be.