Slapstick

Vonnegut returns again and again to a conviction that people need to belong, and here he imagines that a wide network of chosen relatives could do the work that biological families often fail to do, and do it better. The introduction is the part many readers find most affecting. In it, Vonnegut openly recalls the death of his beloved sister, which came soon after she learned that her husband and children had died in a train crash.

The story centers on a brother and sister, Wilbur and Eliza, who are raised apart from the world because of their unusual appearance. As Wilbur grows up to seem more presentable, the two are pulled apart, and Eliza comes to resent him, believing he has abandoned her. Their lives keep drawing them together and then splitting them again. After a massive catastrophe, Wilbur finds himself president of the United States, and he runs on a platform of building extended families on a grand scale.