Oh City of Thieves!
This book should have been so much better than it was. It had all the material. A coming of age story during the Siege of Leningrad, making one of the characters half Jewish while Germany occupied the surrounding area, and giving the characters an absurd task that only makes sense in the historical context of the time. Anyone would want to read that. However, it just didn’t work.
The tone shifts felt like a 16 year old learning how to drive standard for the first time. I’d be reading along at a good clip, and something wonderful and emotional would be happening, then, BAM the next paragraph would be a description of sex straight out of American Pie (1999). It got to the point where the tone shifts though out the chapters got so jarring that I stopped caring about the characters and just wanted the book to be over. I really wanted an emotional connection with them, but I just couldn’t. I’m willing to give the author the benefit of the doubt though, Benioff is a screen writer, and I think this is one of those rare books that would have made a better film than novel.
Next up is Stayin’ Alive: the 1970’s and the Last Days of the Working Class. Part of the reason I’m starting this book this weekend is because it is the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire’s 100th anniversary. Non-fiction always takes me a bit longer to read so, don’t expect any posts about it for a week to a week and a half from now.
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