Rating: 
Summary: Brilliant, if a little self-congratulatory like NYC herself
Review: Like the city, life is sometimes gawky or atonal, moving in syncopated rhythmn, more often graceful and filled with illumination, surrender and faith. The breadth of life explored in this novel makes it a harbinger that will lead us into the next century.
Rating: 
Summary: I kept reading because the reviews were good. But. . .
Review: I kept on plugging away at this book thinking that everything would become clear in the end. However, I was disappointed. I was intrigued because the author writes the book from within the characters' minds, giving insight into the thoughts of the characters (however bizarre they may be). However, the writing style became very confusing. The whole book is written in first person but the story is told by different people without a clear indication of who is talking. So many of the sections leave you asking "Is this a daydream, is this a reality, who's talking, whatever happened to...?" I initially thought there was a plot, but then I changed my mind several times about what the book was really about. And nothing was resolved in the end except that Pem and Sarah get married. But Pem is still confused in his faith and we never discover who stole the cross from his church. I finished the book feeling that I'd really wasted my time although I had really wanted to like the book.
Rating:
Summary: Entertaining and enlightening
Review: Though some of the other reviewers didn't seem to appreciate the episodic, non-linear manner of story-telling Doctorow employs, I thought it worked quite well, and enhanced the reading experience. The book starts at the creation of the universe, takes us through brokenness, suffering and tragedy, but winds up with a wedding at the conclusion, though it's not exactly a happily-ever after ending either.I found this to be a very satisfying and thought-provoking book. In fact, I think I will be reading it again in the not too distant future, because there are some passages worth reflecting on at length, now that I've gotten through the main story. There's a lot going on in this novel, much territory covered - the topics at hand tend to be heavy and require a lot of openness and consideration from the reader. Deep questions of religious doubt and philosophical despair, the existence and nature of God, the cruelty and senselessness of so many things that happen in life, and the methods we use to cope with it all... some healthy, some destructive, some just aimed at numbing us to the reality of what we're having to endure. The arts and culture also factor in, with Doctorow showing us how popular songs and movies can in their own way be "revelations" of equal depth and complexity as ancient scriptures. In fact, one could say that this book is full of epiphanies of various sorts, though they are hardly all pleasant or welcome experiences in the eyes of their beholders. The sections of the book are brief. There aren't any chapters, but the length of each division ranges from just a paragraph or two to several pages at the longest, so you can pick it up and set it back down even if you just have a few minutes to read. It may take a bit of getting used to at the beginning because it's not always immediately clear who is talking, but I really don't think that Doctorow made it all that hard or was intentionally obscure in this. There are enough subtle hints that an attentive reader will pick up on, and even though not every plot line is tidily wrapped up at the end (I'm still not sure what to make of the avenging newsman...), I at least was left feeling very impressed and moved by this book. A quality work of fiction in the postmodern style!
Rating:
Summary: The parts are greater than the sum.
Review: Brilliant, although the parts are greater than the sum. Told in alternating voices and different styles, there is something jazzlike in the book's structure. Sarah, a reconstructionist rabbi, is a primary character, but is never a narrator as I recall. Primary narrators are Pem, an Episcopalian priest who loses his faith in Christianity, Everett, a biographer/friend of Pem, and Sarah's father. Sarah's father was a Jewish boy in a ghetto which was liquidated, and it is the boy who narrates. Everett's father was a survivor of the trenches of WWI, and takes a few turns. There are various other narrators, mostly unidentified by name, but there is Albert Einstein and the "Midrash quartet". The book is an exploration of what belief in G-d and the practice of religion can meaningfully be at our stage in civilization. Evil, history, morality and modern physics all play an important role in the exploration. Did I get every word? No, and a few of the narratives will be tough going for someone with no familiarity with modern physics.
Rating:
Summary: I don't get it...
Review: While each little 'substory' was in and of itself very entertaining. The book as a whole was a disjointed mess. Jumping from voice to voice not knowing who was talking or thinking and the total lack of closure left me very dissatisfied. It would seem that the author with a mild rewrite could make this thing belnd together more sensibly and make it more enjoyable and therefore more menaingful to the reader. It is a very challenging read.
Rating: 
Summary: Lost in the City
Review: City of God is one of the most confusing, yet enlightening books I have read in a very long time. It is like reading a novel in CNN headline news format. There are about five parallel stories intertwined with short chapters on each. There is little warning or way of identifying which character or story line you are following at any one time. But while the story itself was somewhat difficult, the theology is right on. At the end, our main character, a Priest now converting to Judaism, gives a bit of a sermon at his wedding to the beautiful, intelligent, Rabbi. He has just cited a long list of the worlds murderers and dictators and their atrocities, and then says: "Do you not find this a grave challenge to your existence, Lord, that we do these things to one another? That for all our theological excuse making, and despite the moral struggles and the intellectual and technical advances of human history, we live enraged--quietly or explosively, but always greedily enraged? Do you not find it an unforgivable lapse of Yours that after these thousands of years we can no more explain ourselves than we can explain You?" One of the credits on the back cover states that City of God is the crowning achievement of E.L. Doctorow's career--"an astonishing modern masterwork of faith, mystery, and the search for spiritual authenticity." I cannot vouch for all of Doctorow's works. But I can say that this book was worth the effort to read.
Rating:
Summary: Pretentious
Review: Although I have enjoyed some of Doctorow's previous works, such as "Ragtime" and "Billy Bathgate", I struggled to even finish this disappointing work. Doctorow changes points of view so often and unpredictably in the book that it was sometimes baffling to read. In the end I felt that the author was simply trying to show us how much smarter he is than the rest of us and was suffering from a serious case of pretentiousness.
Rating: 
Summary: First half, absolute fantastic, but then disappointing
Review: After 60 pages, I went back and reread from page 1. I did this for three reasons. First, I was quite confused about what was going on. Doctorow relates four or five different peoples thoughts, but without letting us know who. Second, I decided it would be worth going through those 60 pages again, so packed with interesting perspectives and discussions. And last, because I thought it would be fun and useful to reread. Those 60 pages are so good I'm still glad I reread them. But pretty quickly, the book dropped into an easier-to-understand mode (but less interesting in content), and finally shallowed into a combination of predictable, goofy (no really discernable common theme), and (for me) downright uninteresting. What a disappointment. But depending on your religious perspectives, perhaps you will be more satisfied with the conclusion of the book. I finally decided the book is worth a 4/5 rating: the first 60 pages are as interesting a read as I've had in quite a while. And the next hundred are quite interesting. I only became unhappy with the book during the last 50-75 pages. If you want to read an interesting perspective on religion, city/world observations, with some science and cosmology mixed in, this book is worth the initial confusion.
Rating:
Summary: Not your normal novel
Review: I love this book. I enjoyed the abstract writings and non-linear style of it. Anyone who gives this book a bad review just wasn't up to the challenge of reading it. As a previous reviewer said, it takes a lot of thought to read and understand, but the book provokes such thought, and puts God in such a brilliant perspective, that it is well worth it. The only parts that I wasn't able to read into and enjoy were the "standards." Did anyone else read and understand the meaning behind them? Please Email me.
Rating:
Summary: For the post-modern reader
Review: After reading through some of the frustrations of other readers, I would like to point out that there is a reason why this book does not follow the conventions of a linear story line. It is a book about truth and perhaps also about God. Doctorow writes assuming that such a subject is mysterious to approach. So, he doesn't dare write a book about God that would make sense to our finite minds. If there is a God, then by definition he cannot be neatly discussed. Instead Doctorow uses many scenes and voices to talk around the edges...to give the suggestion of truth without trying to stare it in the face. In an age that is struggling to believe, the space that Doctorow creates for us to wonder, struggle, doubt and believe is wonderful and helpful. His approach is remincent of Faulkner or even Borges. In these books you do not expect a coherant narrative with a beginning, middle and end. You simply observe like you would a painting. It is a collected experience that like the rest of life sometimes doesn't make sense.
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