Told in first-person narrative, it describes the later years of fictional Abstract Expressionist painter Rabo Karabekian, who first appeared as a minor character in Vonnegut's Breakfast of Champions (1973).

At the opening of the book, the narrator, Rabo Karabekian, apologizes to the arriving guests: "I promised you an autobiography, but something went wrong in the kitchen..." He describes himself as a museum guard who answers questions from visitors coming to see his priceless collected art.

Upon help from Berman, Karabekian comes to a realization in his life, that he was merely afraid of people, and opens the painting in the potato barn to the public.

"[2] Morse added that Karabekian's final masterpiece, "Now It's the Women's Turn," achieves the goal of meaningful art by developing a backstory for each of the 5,219 characters in the composition before painting it.

"[3] It has also been said that Karabekian's mission in the narrative is to find a family that he feels a part of, which he achieves with the army and the Abstract Expressionism community.

New York Times reviewer Julian Moynahan said that Circe Berman sees Karabekian's main life struggle as strained relationships with women.

Julian Moynahan wrote in a New York Times book review that Bluebeard was a "minor achievement" and that Vonnegut "isn't moving ahead.

Donald Morse identified a difference between Bluebeard and other Vonnegut's novels, which was that the protagonist was happy and satisfied at the end of the narrative.

His most famous, which once hung in the lobby of GEFFCo headquarters on Park Avenue, is titled "Windsor Blue Number Seventeen."

These very panels upon which Windsor Blue used to cover fully became the canvases Karabekian would prime back to pure white and use for his last work locked within his potato barn.