This book starts out with a great premise (a few hundred street kids protecting their city from an invading Nazi regiment), and then wastes every opportunity to fully take advantage of it. The end result is like an uncomfortable marriage between Inglorious Basterds and a Disney cartoon: It's violent and completely out of touch with reality. For example, a kid kills Nazis by intentionally kicking a soccer ball directly onto a land mine, an old woman appears out of nowhere and throws a knife into a Nazi's chest like she's Steven Seagal (then, of course, we never hear from her again), kids are able to build large catapults for attacking the enemy tanks, kids shoot machine guns more accurately and effectively than trained soldiers, etc., etc. The motivations of the characters aren't all that clear, either. We're told that the Nazi commander could easily wipe out all the street kids at a moment's notice, but sees that as being unethical--as if shooting them all one at a time is somehow more morally acceptable. And what it is exactly that the American soldier at the hub of all this is trying to accomplish is never really made clear, either. Carcaterra does a great job with the setting, but once the action starts, everything just seems formulaic, predictable, and repetitive. The romance angle is stale, and way to many people are saved in the nick of time by someone who happens to arrive on the scene at just the last moment. Cue old woman with the throwing knife. The Nazi soldiers are stupid and ineffective. For some reason, they often end up trying to kill the kids with their bare hands instead of by using their weapons. Needless to say, this tactic doesn't pan out very well for them. Lastly, there's too many melodramatic moments to try to make up for the fact that the story doesn't contain much tension at all, especially for a book about a bunch of kids being in constant danger.
The more popular novels I read, the more I realize how few ideas are circulating via vox populi. This amateurish opus has fewer than most. I did not listen to the last CD of this audio book. Why bother? The previous CD's were steaming piles of WWII derivative fantasy "inspired by" a legend involving children's resistance to the German Army in Naples, Italy, in 1943. This novel, which uses many sources, from "Saving Pvt. Ryan" to "Sleepers", is utterly unrealistic. The plucky street urchins are led by a corporal in the US Army and his loyal mastiff dog. Handy for the American, the urchins include a smoldering but wholesome 17-year-old virgin beauty. (Kids, can you say, "Statutory rape"?) With the GI leading them, during the first two days the street boys manage to kill dozens of Germans, destroy a dozen tanks, and blow up a German tanker--with not one casualty among them. The Germans are all called "Nazis," even though only a minority belonged to the party. Even though the GI is a college grad, with a couple years of law school, he is a mere corporal. Preposterous. Men with only two years of college were automatically made officers during WWII. Joe Mantegna gamely reads through this tripe, taking on phony German or Italian accents when the need arises. Sorry, Joe. I don't think I can respect you after this sorry performance. 'Better stick to B-TV series.
What do You think about Street Boys (2003)?
3 STARS"A gang of street urchins and an American soldier fight to liberate the city of Naples from the German army Naples, late September, 1943. The war in Europe is almost won. Italy is leaderless; Mussolini already arrested by anti-fascists. The city has been evacuated, but the German army is moving towards Naples to finish the job. Their chilling instructions are: if the city can't belong to Hitler, it will belong to no one. No one but the children. Orphaned or hidden by parents, abandoned or lost, some as young as ten years old, the children of Naples resist. Aided by a lone Allied soldier, cut off from his regiment, and armed with just a handful of guns, unexploded bombs and their own ingenuity, the street boys are determined to take on the advancing enemy and save the city - or die trying." (From Amazon) A fair novel based on the mafia and suspense.
—Kris - My Novelesque Life
This World War II action novel purports to tell the story of how a couple hundred boys in Naples under the leadership of an American soldier fought off the Nazi army intent on destroying the city as it retreated from Italy. I think that teenage boys especially might enjoy the story which moves from one battle to another in which the boys are hopelessly outnumbered but using elements of surprise and street smarts (together with the military strategy of an American soldier and an Italian veteran) they beat the bad guys. When I was a teenager, I read "The Guns of Navarone" and I think that though teenage boys would enjoy both, they would remember Navarone long after they forgot this book.When I was a teenager, I had a dream in which the United States was overrun by some enemy, and the soldiers had gotten to within a mile of my house, but we fought back. For years afterward, in idle moments I would look at the landscape in my hometown and imagine how to fight a battle there. This book probably satisfies a young person's desire to be a hero, to overcome the odds, etc.For me, the audiobook was easy to listen to (Joe Montegna did well with various voices), but felt more like a TV show than a group of real people I cared about.
—Jim B
Se dice que los héroes no nacen, se hacen. Y durante cuatro fatídicos días del año de 1943, esos héroes, se hicieron en Italia. Al escribir este relato, Lorenzo Carcaterra se inspiró en su propia vida en las calles, no como huérfano en Nápoles sino como niño en uno de los barrios más peligrosos de Nueva York. Tanto Nápoles, destruida durante la guerra, como la leyenda de los temerarios niños de la calle que enfrentaron a los nazis, constituyen una parte imborrable de la infancia de Carcaterra, en el núcleo de ésta novela, hay una verdad sencilla: Una banda de niños, despojados de lo más importante en su vida, se enfrentó con uno de los ejércitos más poderosos del mundo y, sin duda, el más sanguinario entre todos los que invadieron sus tierras a lo largo de la historia. La historia de estos niños que desfiaron a los alemanes se ha convertido en un cuento popular y en Nápoles, mucha gente habla de estos sucesos.
—Ambar Nepomuceno
