Sucker's Portfolio

There are certain authors that I know that I will enjoy basically anything they write.  As a consequence, I do not buy books by these authors very often because books by them are sold in basically every bookstore, no matter how small.  That way if I underpack books for a vacation or some other similar circumstance, I can find books to read.  Kurt Vonnegut is one of these authors.  His latest book, Sucker's Portfolio, was on sale so I snatched it up.  Since it was a collection of short stories, it seemed like a nice thing to read during the hectic end of semester weeks.



Since this is the third collection published after his death, I was a little worried that they would be scraping the bottom of the barrel for things to include.  However, some of the stories were very enjoyable.  I thought that the first one was particularly interesting and was kind of a corollary to a Connie Willis book I like a lot, Passage.

In addition to the short stories the book also included an "unfinished" science fiction story.  I was interested to read this because, well, I like science fiction and I like Kurt Vonnegut.  This was sort of a surprise because the story is clearly building up and then it abruptly ends in mid-sentence.  Most of the time when unfinished work is published, it at least ends on a period but perhaps Mr. Vonnegut needed to go to the bathroom urgently or something.

One of the problems that I had with these stories were that none are particularly happy.  In his full length books, Vonnegut can generally offset this with humor but in these stories that is somewhat lacking.  They are still enjoyable, just do not expect to have a smile on your face when you finish them.

In summary, these are some stories that a Vonnegut fan would definitely enjoy.  His style of writing shines through and it is a nice quick read.  However, I can definitely see why these remained unpublished for so long.  Someone who is new to Vonnegut would probably enjoy one of his other books more (Slaughterhouse-Five is a particular favorite of mine).

Overall, I would give this book an 85%.