The book is a quick and engaging read, which helps explain
its longstanding perch on bestseller lists and conspicuous ubiquity at
bookstores nationwide. The story is set in Leningrad in the waning days of
World War II, when the city is under siege and its residents are starving. The
narrative is carried by the fictional author’s grandpa, a former solider who
had settled in America in the decades after the told escapades. We thus know,
right off the bat, that the hero, Lev, will make it -- a no small
matter given the number of bullets flying toward him over those 200-plus pages.
The grandson narrator freely acknowledges that, as a writer,
he has taken some liberties with Lev’s story. But by the time the story ends,
it becomes clear that this is a colossal understatement. The plot is
delightfully absurd. Lev gets caught looting a corpse and faces imprisonment or
worse. As he is detained, he meets another man in a similar predicament, a
muscular, sex-crazed, salty-tongued companion named Kolya. The odd couple has
an unusual assignment -- find a dozen eggs and deliver them to a Soviet colonel,
who needs the eggs for a wedding cake for his daughter. So far so good. But
what begins as a bleak but brisk-paced tale full of dark-humored naturalism
gets bogged down in fake pathos and over-the-top action. The comically absurd
becomes the painfully absurd as Bentioff, scraps emotional honesty in favor of
fake pathos and over-the-top action scenes that would be better placed in
Tarantino movie than in a book of historical fiction. The pages turn quickly
but the book disappointedly devolves into action-packed melodrama -- a “Water for Elephants” with testicles.
Sure, there are plenty of smiles and tears to complement the bullets and
grenades, but the laughs are generally triggered dirty jokes and the tears are
those of melodrama. But the lingering feeling after the final page is one of
frustration and disappointment at the wasted opportunity. Bentioff is a
Hollywood screenwriter, not a historian, which explains why “City of Thieves”
is the way it is. He is a gifted and engaging storyteller, which helps explain
the book’s success and which makes it a fine airplane companion. Unfortunately,
a reader hungry for a meatier, weightier war story, with emotional honesty and fare should scour elsewhere.
