A review by rprkrshearer
City of Thieves by David Benioff

adventurous emotional funny sad tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Plot
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.0

This book has some really lovely, well phrased descriptions, and one-liners, though its harrowing ones are more vivid; the brutality of Nazis, the sickness of war, how unbearable people can be to one another, in the name of —what? Power? Domination. Control. There are many great descriptions of violence, abuse, torture, terror, with the casual, still somber brush of adapted normalcy. Despite this, there is humor, love, camaraderie, and a restrained hope that gestures at being mature and realistic, despite those adjectives being ill suited for the concept. The joy for living in the face of these horrors, when it rears, is stark, and a relief. 

It is very much a boy narrative. Amid death and war, there is always room for meditations on naked thighs and masturbatory fancies. I suppose the sex drive links us to life itself, and can enable unrealistic endurance, unless weaponized, used as an instrument of suffering; which, while not impossible, is much less frequent a torment reserved for men, both in general and during war. While so much of the sex had, or referenced in this book is explicit, said explicitness is saved largely for moments of consent; and while the violence is often described in detail, sexual violence remains a foggier, more distant allusion, that we, blessedly, don’t have to experience in the present tense or in first person. Despite their obsession with the act or idea of getting laid, they are lovable, Lev and Kolya; charming, eager teenagers who hate war, and who also love one other with a  commitment unique to the atrocities they’ve endured. And Kolya, in all his brash fearlessness and humor, remains endearing to all, the reader included (despite his “calculated neglect” bullshit).

Most surprisingly for me, I think, were the many specific references to Russian novelists, essayists, and poets; the many invocations of authors, titles, and quotes, both heralding in allusion and openly praising the sustaining power of literature. I liked that as an unexpected through line, the narrator being the son of a poet, Kolya being a writer at heart. 

“You could not fight in moderation,” Lev says of the war, of staying alive. Some things you just can’t compromise on.
And Kolya’s death was such a letdown. I’m glad that wasn’t horrific and brutal, but its casualness and inevitability were both so sad, despite expecting that it would happen. It just seems so unfair. Especially after Lev makes it back to the Colonel.
But, of course, right? Aphorisms exist (and repeat, ad nauseam throughout human history) for a reason. War is hell. People are flawed. Accidents happen. The brutality is in the banal.
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