CLOSING TIME - Joseph Heller

This is billed as the sequel to Catch 22, but even though it contains a few of the characters from the 1961 novel this is a stand alone event.

It is really two stories, one concerning the later stages of the life of John Yossarian and the other the adolescent to late middle age story of Sammy Singer and Lew Rabinowitz. The latter two grew up together in Coney Island, went to war together, with Singer a gunner on Yossarian’s bomber hence there is this tenuous link to Catch 22 throughout this.

It basically concerns the characters getting ready to die as they are all approaching the end of their lives. It deals with ,as Heller sees it, the decline in the America he knew growing up. His view is very cynical but we still have the trade mark humour which can make you laugh out loud at the absurdities of the politics and the greed and hypocrisy of American life, or anywhere for that matter.

It wanders off into sections of fantasy at times and I feel owes a lot to Slaughterhouse 5, particularly with the fantasy sections,Vonnegut actually makes an appearance in the novel.

So, a  funny, sad novel, nowhere near as good as Catch 22, but as Heller said often, nothing much is.