Rating: 
Summary: Complex, riveting, powerful, especially after Sept 11th
Review: Ask me what this book is about. It's about the many voices of New York City, all talking at once. It's about the ages of man (and I mean "man", not people), and his evolution toward maturity. It's about faith in a world shrouded by evil. It's about meaning and where to look for it. It's about literature and how it's written, interpreted and understood. This a multi-layered book. I rank it as one of the best I've ever read, right up there with Rushdie's Satanic Verses.
Rating:
Summary: Absolutely Brilliant
Review: This was the first Doctorow book that I read and was overwhelmed by its utter brilliance. It is surely amongst the finest pieces of American fiction of the past decade if not much longer. Doctorow's non-linear style is exciting and his questions on the meaning of God in contemporary America is provocative. This novel left me thining after each page, probing my own mind on what role God plays in my life (if any at all).God Bless Doctorow.
Rating: 
Summary: Disjointed - Unworthy
Review: Perhaps my expectations were too high after reading the Waterworks, but this book stunk. I can best describe it as a series of disjointed philosophical musings. The silly "mystery" was never explained and the author's voice kept changing. A narrative by Einstein came out of nowhere. There was no real story other than a tale of love involving a man who is extremely hard to like. A complete and utter waste of time.
Rating:
Summary: What a waste of paper and time!
Review: After reading this book, I wish someone would explain why it got the rave reviews. The only interesting parts were the memoirs of the child in the Holocaust. It was totally confusing otherwise, with no explanation as to who the continually changing first person was in each section. As to the mystery of the cross that was moved, it was never explained. What a waste of paper and time!
Rating: 
Summary: Title is misleading
Review: One star for the effort of writing a novel and another for trying to assume the voice of Wittgenstein. The rest, however, is anybody's guess. Choppy, confused narration sets the tone for the entire novel, which was unable to sustain genuine interest from me.
Rating: 
Summary: From concrete to abstract
Review: In this book over-burdened with abstruse, over-written, abstract musings, one very concrete passage stands out. A trunk filled with Holocaust archival documents from Lithuania is opened in a stark, functional room in Customs at JFK Airport. The passage focuses several of the key themes in the book with powerful, poetic economy of language. The reader is able to use the telling imagery to make her own transition to universal and timeless truths. Nothing else has so challenged my rejection of a transcendent god than this passage. Doctorow has forced me to re-think my theology.
Rating: 
Summary: A lot of effort to absorb, but some rewards along the way
Review: Just finished the book (whew!). Stopped a few times to read others (easy, guilty pleasures, such as a Clive Cussler's Dirk Pitt adventure). I've never read Doctorow before. The title attracted me, along with the "mystery," or was it a foretelling(?), of the cross found on the roof of an evolutionary Judaic synagogue. Anyway, I finished it more satisfied than I thought I would. I like to learn from what I read--and I learned so much about life in a Jewish ghetto during WWII. I learned the horrors from a soldier's pov during the same war and the Vietnam war. Just snippets, mind you, but very salient ones indeed. I love the last "sermon" at the end of the book--Hey God, quit taking it on the shoulder and show us the devil in all his revulsion with the evil people we all know of rotting on his body, and I think more people would behave better towards their fellow man. Evil needs more immediate consequences. I found myself questioning my own sense of belief in organized religion, Jesus, etc. I liked having some of my queries validated. Ultimately, it all boils down to how we behave and how we treat each other. What if God was one of us? Of course, most of the book is more elusive to grasp, but I reverberated to parts of it and feel good from the experience. I can't imagine reading any more of his works. I couldn't take the brutality as I imagine he would write it. So descriptive. Would someone tell me what the bird references meant that were sprinkled throughout? Did they represent the diversity and similarities of religions or what?
Rating:
Summary: Don't Visit City of God
Review: Finally, I am finished this most obscure, tiresome and esoteric novel. I tried, I really did. After each sitting however, it became harder and harder to keep going. City of God is not the kind of book you pick up and read once a week or so - it commands your attention on a daily basis. Otherwise, taking on the novel infrequently (as I did I'm afraid) will result in a feeling somewhat like entering a busy, foreign marketplace without a clue as to where you are or where to go. Good luck.
Rating:
Summary: City of God...
Review: Not an easy book to read, you do sweat for every idea Doctorow transmits, but some of them are really worth it... it contains very interesting theories about life and God, how could everything have started, the limitations God puts on us, the changes that are happening to the world in that respect. Offers many questions to be thought of in order to find a new approach to this adventure, opens our eyes on daily issues, that we have the tendency to take for granted, because this is the way they have been taught to us, and we feel no need to get any deeper into them. A story about the Holocaust, and the connection between the Jews, German and Russians, how people reacted differently to that, and what risks were involved to the ones around. It includes some nice songs, and poems that Doctorow felt needed in order to lighten up a little his book, and to transmit his ideas. It talks about the relationships between people, the origin of God and life. The book will add more dilemmas in your head, and if you are not into some serious reading and un-answered questions, then you are reading the wrong book.
Rating:
Summary: Doctorow's new novel
Review: I read this book to do a review on for a school paper and i loved it. I admit that the book seemed sketchy and unclear at the beginning, but the depth and profundity was amazing. I would be willig to compare this book to Joyce. It is admittably a hard read and difficult to comprehend. The structure is not as clear as many people would like, but it is this structure that adds style to the novel. Doctorow has taken a step back from the common structure to construct a novel with great depth and insight. It is my opinion that the stream of consciousnes style Doctorow uses enhances the book. It is from this point of view that Doctorow can truly transmit his ideas clearly. THe book touches on very personal subjects, such as religion and the holocaust. This is a book that tries to search for understanding and truth. It is the substance of deep thought and spirituality. Once you read the novel as a person having the thoughts that come through, the novel makes perfect sense. Yes, DOtorow speaks of science and of cultural mediums such as movies and songs, but these serve again as a search for truth. In this world in which we exist, there are so many question, and Doctorow has writen this book in order to answer some of the seemingly simple questions. I agree that his other novels flow much smoother and have a much more suspenseful plotline, but this book reaches another level, a level of profundity and mystery. Doctorow, in this novel tries to create an understanding of religion juxtaposed with science and modern society. After I finished this novel, I was completely blown away. It is a brilliant novel, with new ideas mixed with old ideas. The plot of the book portrays not so much a physical conflict, but rather an internal conflict that each character has to singly define. Through his fusion of twentieth century American culture with spirituality and science, E. L. Doctorow paints a novel in which one must reevaluate their own modern spirituality. I have to say that this book probably would not fare well with people who have a strong conservative religious belief, because this book has swayed away from the common ideas of traditional religion in its search for a modern view of God. I truly believe this is a successful novel. If Doctorow was trying to write a novel a suspenseful plot, he failed, but I do not believe this book was meant to be a book that one could not put down. I believe this book was meant to ask the questions we all have asked before. It reaches another level where one would put down the book to evaluate for himself the meaning and the ideas Doctorow has put forth.
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