What inspired me about this book of courage and humor in a war-mad world were the images; Vivid and surreal scenes that bring a hackneyed subject to life and set this novel apart from the rest.
Lev, the half-Jewish (well, his father is Jewish, so that doesn’t count, does it?) And his Russian role Kolya are released from a Russian jail in the besieged city of Leningrad during WWII to find few eggs. for the Colonel. whose daughter is getting married and would so much desire a cake in this city where cannibalism has taken hold of the less fortunate. Our Daring Duo goes to the side occupied by the Germans on their egg hunt and encounters a myriad of adventures, some creepy, some heartbreaking, as they find their treasure and take it to their Colonel, who has forgotten all about it. about the incident in the meantime and has become the recipient of a number of smuggled goodies, far exceeding eggs, for his beloved daughter’s wedding. Too much for the story, sounds like one of those old westerns, huh?
Now, the images that stick with me: a dead German floating over the hungry city on his parachute, killed by the cold instead of bullets, the well-fed colonel’s daughter skating on the Neva as his city starves, the dying boy caring for his lonely chicken while his grandfather’s icy grove rests beside him, the human sausage factory for those who aspire for some “meat” during the siege, Kolya and Sonya having sex and talking loudly in the middle of a room full of starving refugees, dogs tied with explosives and used as mines against advancing German tanks. These are just a sample.
The exuberant Kolya and the lanky Lev are stark contrasts despite their physical and psychological differences. Despite his gregariousness, we also discover that Kolya is attempting to write the Great Russian Novel in chunks during breaks in his quest, furiously writing with a pencil on scraps of paper. The ruthless sniper, Vika, a young woman who dresses as a man to hide from the Germans, provides the love interest for the restrained Lev in ways that even surprise him. The burly Abendroth, the German Einsaztkommando (a group of elite assassins more deadly than the Waffen SS), is the epitome of an arch-villain, drinking brandy, playing chess, seeing through the appearances of our heroes and killing people. random.
Although the ending was predictable, some of the lines stuck with me long after I finished the book, etching the characters indelibly on my mind: Kolya, who stumbles on a farm with four healthy Russian women kept as sex slaves for the invaders, he relates. the episode like, “my balls sounded like a pair of dumbbells” while Lev, seeing his bolder friend happily kissing an old girlfriend, comments “the loneliest sound in the world is other people making love” .
And as for the author, who seems to have borrowed much of his grandfather’s story, he follows grandfather’s advice when things don’t make sense and “makes up” for the reader, thus giving us a memorable read.