Title: Lugubrious....
Review: A very unsatisfying book with a very interesting setting. The portrait of the immediate aftermath of WW2 in Berlin is excellent but the story is drawn out much longer than necessary. The writing is OK but the characters are unappealing, especially the main character, whose joylessness is monotonic in the extreme. You don't expect a story set in war-devastated Berlin to be a boffo laff riot but you can expect some spirit, some elan and energy.
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