City of Thieves by David Benioff

I try to avoid WWII stories most of the time. I just feel a little over it. So when my book club picked City of Thieves I had mixed feelings. On the one hand, it was a WWII drama. On the other hand, it was written by David Benioff, the same guy who brought us the 25th Hour, so there was reason to think that it might not be the kind of schmaltzy, life-affiriming thing we've come to expect from WWII fiction. And on the other, third(?) hand, a Russian library regular told me that he had read the book and that it seemed better researched than most of the American books about Russia.

The thing that makes City of Thieves different is that it doesn't feel like a book trying to force emotion on you by being set in WWII. It's a better-told story than that, putting the plot and the strong dialogue out there and letting the reader decide how to feel. There were moments of levity, and there were moments of darkness. But the reason it works is because the book doesn't ask us to do what so many others do, which is to erase all previous joy because of the new suffering. Just because things are bad on page 78, the book doesn't expect readers to forget they were laughing on page 68. It also has a very extemporaneous feel, less planned and plotted out, more characters thrown into the grinder and ending up one place or another. It surprises readers without going for the big twist.
It's written almost exactly the way we like our war stories. There is viloence, danger, broadly drawn heroes The story is almost a little too fantastic in spots, but that's exactly what makes it a pitch-perfect war story as opposed to a war novel.