You know, one of these days I'm going to learn to plan in advance. If I'd have thought about it properly, I'd have made sure that the Round Ireland With A Fridge recommendation happened today as it is St Patrick's Day and it would be kind of apt. But I didn't, so you'll just have to click on the link if you want your dash of Irishness today. Hey, it's the internet, all dates are virtual, anyway.

Read an interesting interview with Carl Hiaasen today, who seems to be in all the British papers at the moment - ah, the power of the publicity tour! He'll be featuring in a future recommendation, anyway.

Not too much blurb to go in here today as I've been very busy with work this week and also doing research for a book I'm planning to write (more of that at a later date when I'm in the mood for blaant self-pluggery) but, just as an advance warning, next week's issue won't be here on Sunday as I'm away for the weekend and probably won't get the chance to write and post it. It'll either appear on Friday night (unlikely) or next Tuesday evening (much more likely) so don't worry about me disappearing into the clutches of an Ashcroft snatch squad if there's nothing here on Sunday!

So, here's this week's recommendation:

Mother Night by Kurt Vonnegut

'We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.'

One of the great things about reviewing a Vonnegut book is that you know it will include so many quotable lines, you almost don't have to bother writing about the actual book, just choose a bunch of your favourite lines from the book and write a few sentences to link them together in a vaguely connected way. The review can jump around from subject to subject with no transition, and instead of being sloppy writing, you can call it a homage to the 'Vonnegutian' writing style

I could do that, but instead I'm going to write a proper recommendation for this one. Much as I'd like to write in a Vonnegutian style, I doubt I can pull it off and it's a lot harder than it looks. Stephen King mentions in On Writing that he can take years to write a book, continually editing and rewriting until every word's perfect. Much as I'd like to do that here, I've promised a weekly recommendation, not an annual one so I'll just bash it out in my usual style.

When I started writing these recommendations, I knew I'd be doing Vonnegut sooner rather than later, the question was just which book to do. It would have been easy to do Slaughterhouse-Five, but as that's easily his most famous book, I'm assuming that most of you will have at least heard of it and probably read it (but if you haven't go out and get a copy and read it now - the column will still be here when you get back) so recommending it wouldn't really achieve much. Instead, I decided on another book about World War Two but one that takes it from a different angle. Also, if you've not read Vonnegut before, or were put off his work by the structure of Slaughterhouse-Five it's probably the most easily readable of his novels. Even he admits in the Introduction that this is the only novel of his whose moral he knows (the quote above).

The basic story of Mother Night is that of Howard W. Campbell Jr who, throughout the War, combines the role of being one of the Reich's top propagandists with his other identity as one of the leading spies within the Nazi Party, using codes within his broadcasts to broadcast information about the Nazi war effort back to America. It's not an easy task to pull off - to all but a select few of his listeners, he's the ultimate traitor, endlessly boasting about the superiority of his new country and spreading despicable lies and propaganda every day for years. I'd try and make some sort of reference to Rush Limbaugh here, except the book makes clear that Campbell has a conscience and is aware of the evil he has caused.

It jumps back and forth between two times - Campbell's life in Germany during the war, and his life in New York post-war where he's managed to carve out some kind of anonymity for himself, occasionally wondering just what strings were pulled to get him to this position. However, early on we discover that Campbell is writing this life story in an Israeli prison cell while he awaits trial on charges of war crimes. However, Campbell is not in the business of making excuses for his life, accepting that what he did was right, even if the morality of his achievements may be a little more twisted than normal. From his perspective, he has done no wrong, even if the United States Government refuses to give the evidence that will prove this, and he uses his chance to tell his extraordinary story from the abnormal morality of the Reich to the bizarre mess of double identities and hypocrisy he encounters in 60s New York, when his carving of a chess set from a broom handle sets off a course of events that brings many old demons out of the woodwork.

Betond all that, Mother Night is also a novel about identity, circling around the idea of how we become what we pretend to be, how others can force us into being that which we've only pretended to be. Not just Campbell, but all the characters in the book, are sure inside of who they are and who they pretend to be, and where they draw the line, but it becomes clear that this is just an illusion, that we cannot avoid the consequences of our actions even if we feel it was a fake who committed them.

That all makes it sound rather complex but the real strength of Mother Night comes from the fact that it's an easy book to read. Like all Vonnegut narrators, Campbell is an engaging storyteller drawing you into his world and seemingly laying himself bare. It's a short book, and quite possible to read in one extended period, but the kicker comes afterwards when you start to think about what you've read. It plants ideas inside your head, gets you asking questions about your behaviour, what you would do in the same situation and ultimately what the difference between good and evil is, and how can we be sure of our judgement of anyone if we're not really judging them, but what they're pretending to be.

At times like this, when we seem ready to head towards another war, and we're being told what the difference is between good and evil, books like this are important. Vonnegut doesn't argue that there's no such thing as good or evil, just that we need to be sure what we're talking about.

'And yet another moral occurs to me now: Make love when you can. It's good for you.'

That's it for this week. See you in five days or nine days, whenever it happens.

Nick