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A review by thechaliceofaries
Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
3.0
I really did enjoy most of this. The messy chapters and weirdly large host of characters and erratic timelines were all quite confusing at first and I was tempted to give up within the first 100 pages because I just felt like I had no clue what I was reading and nothing was making sense and nothing seemed to be going anywhere. And then it hit me around the 100-page mark that all of those irregularities are the point of this novel. The way this novel is written is meant to mirror the chaos, unpredictability and confusion of war, and once I got that - the rest of this book got much more fun to read. The sarcastic narration which annoyed me at first began to resemble a sitcom (I thought it was quite like the narrator on the show Arrested Development). I began to laugh out loud at the stupidity and satire. I also had moments of genuine emotion where through all the crude jokes and lightheartedness, the clearly unjust and painful realities of war shone through and broke my heart. I did alternate between reading this and listening to the Audible audiobook version (which I highly recommend btw!!) and found that both methods complemented each other nicely in my experience of this novel.
Unfortunately, I really can’t bring myself to give this more than three stars because as a woman I just found it very difficult to stomach the extensive misogyny written into this book. As great as the rest of it was, there were full on paragraphs describing sexual assault, most of which is approached in a very careless and nonchalant manner throughout. Many characters that I liked were instantly ruined for me because they participated in the pointless harassment and objectification of women and seemingly suffered no consequences for their actions. Don’t get me wrong, I do understand why this book is a cult classic, but I personally could not bring myself to forgive this particular shortcoming.
Unfortunately, I really can’t bring myself to give this more than three stars because as a woman I just found it very difficult to stomach the extensive misogyny written into this book. As great as the rest of it was, there were full on paragraphs describing sexual assault, most of which is approached in a very careless and nonchalant manner throughout. Many characters that I liked were instantly ruined for me because they participated in the pointless harassment and objectification of women and seemingly suffered no consequences for their actions. Don’t get me wrong, I do understand why this book is a cult classic, but I personally could not bring myself to forgive this particular shortcoming.