When a friend tells you about a book they love, in fact it’s their favorite novel, you must find a copy. I did and I was soon enthralled. It’s A Gentleman in Moscow.
It’s 1922 in Russia. Count Alexander Rostov has been deemed an unrepentant aristocrat by the new Bolshevik tribunal and, under house arrest, is to live out his life in the grand Metropol Hotel. On the cover above he is dressed to go out, looking down at the Moscow street that he has no hope of ever reaching. The hotel is near the Kremlin, as you see in the map that appears before Book One.
A Gentleman in Moscow was published in the United States in 2016, so “authoritarianism” might have already entered our national vocabulary. Amor Towles could not have been more on target in describing this life in a restricted, punitive, one-party society.
Yet his story is charming, with humor, imagination and almost musical writing, with its cadence of surprise and resolution. I read aloud to Sam a scene where the hotel master chef reacts when Rostov’s guesses a mystery ingredient. It comes after Rostov says to the head waiter,
“Inspired. But I do have one question: The herb that Emile has tucked under the ham — I know it isn’t sage. By any chance, is it nettle?”
Some say this novel is a mannered fantasy because the author makes a whole world out of a hotel. A small family somehow materializes around the Count. And, they point out, the cruelty of authoritarians from Lenin and Stalin to the time of Khrushchev, is merely suggested.
However, to me, an American reading this in 2021, mere signs of social repression are not fantasy, but uncomfortably realistic.
Towles offers hope. Later in the book the Count’s reason for escape comes from the best of the human spirit. It’s something to believe in.
Above all, it’s a story to hold your attention without bruising it. Rostov says to his new nine-year-old friend,
“Manners are not like bonbons, Nina. You may not choose the ones that suit you best; and you certainly cannot put the half-bitten ones back in the box …”
Nina eyed the Count with an expression of seasoned tolerance, then presumably for his benefit, spoke a little more slowly.
If you read A Gentleman in Moscow, please share what you think about it.
A wonderful book! A lovely story, beautifully written, full of human spirit. I also read his "Rules of Civility" - another good story beautifully written. He has a new one out - The Lincoln Highway - which I'm looking forward to reading.
I loved that book and think your comments about it are exactly right!