City of Thieves by David Benioff

Once upon a time a Borders salesperson gave me a glowing and completely unsolicited review of this book. "You should read this," she said. "If you don't buy it today, you should buy it next time. Or get it somewhere else. It's really, really good." She was so earnest that it was hard not to take notice. I looked at the book, and put it back for another time, but it stayed on my radar, and I heard more good things about it, and I finally did get around to reading it.

And I just could not get into it.

The premise is this. Lev, the main character, and Kolya, a deserter from the Red Army, are facing execution during the Nazi invasion of Russia. But the colonel's daughter is getting married, and his wife can't find a single egg in the city to make the wedding cake, and in a moment of benevolence he promises to release to two if they can locate a dozen eggs within the week. Their quest for eggs takes them through a bombed-out and starving Leningrad, and out into the countryside where they encounter all the horrors of war that you would expect, amid surprising moments of humor and even sweetness.

It had all the makings of a good story. The characters were endearing, the setting was gripping, the plot was novel, the writing was well-executed. And yet it never grabbed me. I always felt like I was reading it to get through. For a brief moment at the climax of the novel I felt drawn in, interested in the outcome and the characters, but the moment faded almost in the moment of the climax, and the heartbreaking end didn't really feel so heartbreaking, and the happy postscript didn't make me feel all that happy. I just felt indifferent about it all.

I spent a lot of time trying to figure out why I felt this way about the book. It just didn't engage me but it seemed like it ought to. The conclusion I've come to is that there is just too much vulgarity throughout the book - from foul language to too-explicit sexual conversation to unnecessary talk about bodily functions. Maybe such vulgarity is accurate to the setting of the book. Maybe. But it's effect on me was distracting. I was skimming over words and sentences and occasionally entire passages so much that I could never quite lose myself in the story.

It's unfortunate, but this is the first book on my blog that I just wouldn't recommend. I usually don't even make it far enough into those books for them to merit a review. Ah well, a first for everything.