I've heard people, and seen plenty of reviews on this site, describe this book as the most absurd they have ever read. That kind of blows my mind. Those people must be reading nothing but Jane Austen novels and James Patterson serials or something. Spit-balling, off the top of my head, books equally or exceedingly absurd: A Dirty Job, A Confederacy of Dunces, V., Catch-22, John Dies at the End...The list goes on and on. 
 I mean, yeah, this is a great book and all but it's just not as zany and out there as most seem to think it is. I dunno, maybe I just read a lot of weird stuff. To me, this is an elongated, exceptionally sarcastic and deadpan, treatise on PTSD and it's effects on the human mind. It's as sad as it is hilarious, much in the same way Cat's Cradle was before it, and Breakfast of Champions after... 
 ...In the end I leave it with 4 well deserved stars. Maybe if I didn't enjoy Catch-22 so much more I could justify a 5th...I just really think Heller did the whole WWII fractured mind/time thing that much better. [obligatory] So it goes...