City of Thieves

It's been a while since I've enjoyed a fiction(-alized) book as much as this one. A friend lent me this, and I have had it on my shelf for weeks and weeks...but once I started it, I'm having a hard time putting it down, wondering when I'm going to find some time to do some more reading. Turns out the author wrote the book that one of my favorite movies is based upon (25th Hour), so it's not exactly surprising that I like this book, but I'm still struck by how much I'm enjoying it. I think I will remember the first page, the feeling evoked, for the rest of my life–I have been thinking about it every time I have a meal.

This book oddly reminds me of a comic, Jar of Fools (by Jason Lutes), in that it has an amazing combination of hope, despair, brutality and humor.


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So I finished this one in two sittings–although, granted, the second sitting was 2 hours long. I loved this book. The only reservation I had was with a slightly too-pat ending, but it's tough to have complaints when (1) the ending was still satisfying, just less so than the rest of the book and (2) it's a true story, of a sort, so it's likely that “pat” ending was simply the way things went.

Great read!

Absolutely spellbinding, I finished it in a day. It's brutal at times in it's stark description of survival during war, but with hope & youthful innocence throughout