Lisa M. reviewed on + 4 more book reviews
Helpful Score: 1
I thoroughly enjoyed this coming of age story in which a 17 year old Jewish boy accused of looting and an inadvertent Red Army deserter are forced to find a dozen eggs during the siege of St. Petersburg. (Sorry, but Ive always refused to call that city Leningrad, even when that was actually its name.) They connive, beg, worry, freeze and fight (mostly with other people, but also with each other) so that the daughter of a secret police mucky-muck can have a cake at her wedding. A cake. With fresh eggs. In the dead of winter. During the longest siege in modern history.
It is written with large doses of wit and bitter humor. (Credit goes to Iranian director Jafar Panahi for that phrase, which I believe is more accurate than the common American term black humor.) To boot, the book captures the time, the place, the war, the Soviet mentality, and especially the weather, so that you feel as though you, too, are trudging along in the snow with Lev and Kolya. Trying to find fresh eggs. In the dead of winter. During the longest siege in modern history.
P.S. Keep in mind that the preface to the book is the preface to a novel, which means that it, too, is fiction. Even so, I have to believe that in the USSR during WWII, there must have been at least one young female sniper who was as much of a force to be reckoned with as Vika.
It is written with large doses of wit and bitter humor. (Credit goes to Iranian director Jafar Panahi for that phrase, which I believe is more accurate than the common American term black humor.) To boot, the book captures the time, the place, the war, the Soviet mentality, and especially the weather, so that you feel as though you, too, are trudging along in the snow with Lev and Kolya. Trying to find fresh eggs. In the dead of winter. During the longest siege in modern history.
P.S. Keep in mind that the preface to the book is the preface to a novel, which means that it, too, is fiction. Even so, I have to believe that in the USSR during WWII, there must have been at least one young female sniper who was as much of a force to be reckoned with as Vika.
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