Off Lust List, On Book Club: City of Thieves

I want to back of my premature recommendation to one of the Slackers to look for this book. It begins with an interesting premise, interviewing one's grandfather to find out what he did in the war. Something that is honorable for both family and national histories. But this story of a wild goose chase, a domesticated chicken egg chase, during the siege of Leningrad, is unbelievable, too fabricated, too instructive. It attempts to be simultaneously larded with black humor and gaunt with pictures of starvation and torture. Unlike The Tin Drum, Benioff's talents are not strong enough to carry a multifaceted tale, and while suspenseful, it leaves the reader what he actually got out of investing the time to read it.

I cannot derive a single focused core message from the novel. Is it war is absurd? Everyone has at least one significant week in one's life? Or that terrible times excuse terrible crimes? None of these feels predominant to me. Waiting for the end of the month to see what the group will say, or whether once again they will begin with the phrase, "Slacker-blogger of course did not like this book."