Rating: 
Summary: Stick with it; it's worth it in the end
Review: I forced myself to read the first 1/3 of this book, but I just couldn't finish it. I just couldn't follow it.
Rating: 
Summary: DOCTOROW DOES IT AGAIN...AMEN!
Review: It's sort of a ragged novel, this book by "Ragtime" novelist E. L. Doctorow. The story may seem simple -- a brass cross is stolen from an Episcopal church, only to be found on its roof of a synagogue -- but stick around beyond the first 30 pages or so. The theft gives Father Thomas Pemberton reason to question (and renew his faith), and affords his writer friend, Everett, a reason to write a novel. And so "City of God" is a novel-within-a-novel, whose "notebooks" tell this story chockfull of images and voices (and even song lyrics), tossed in with Holocaust horrors, defrocking and love affairs, that bemuse, befuddle and bewilder. Amen!
Rating:
Summary: I love E. L. Doctorow, but...
Review: Really challenging. There are so many voices in this book, I still don't know how many characters there are. Two married rabbis, a Christian priest, somebody's father, a bird-watcher, a writer, a Nazi-hunter... And most of them speak separately. Don't get me wrong, there are some golden nuggets of wisdom and insight into the Western world's views of the beginning of the universe, and God, or whatever you want to call that force, or non-force. This is one heck of a book and its very timely right now when so many people are questioning faith. This book makes you think, and I like that. But what's with the birds?...
Rating: 
Summary: An estimable effort
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.
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