It is a complex book, but also very easy to understand. It's hilarious at times, and sad at others. This book is about the travels of a teenage kid wandering through New York by himself. It is a complex book, but also very easy to understand. It's hilarious at times, and sad at others.
Heller presents a hilarious, and at times, sadistic satire of war.
The pace is wickedly fast, and yet plods along with the melancholy and wretchedness of war. There is no clear timeline presented, as the story flips back and forth, the reader never quite knowing which way is up as the text rushes on, as Heller throws the reader into a chaos of words that so well reflects the chaos of war. Some passages cannot be read without laughing out loud, or rereading the text just to revel in the joke again. Other passages are so vivid, it is as though the scene is playing itself out before ones' eyes. The backdrop is a tiny island called Pianosa, the date about 1944, but one can never really be sure, nor does one need to be.