A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles
A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles
I read Towles first book, Rules of Civility, and knew I had to read this book when I heard about it coming out and I am so glad I did. Towles has this amazing gift for writing and weaving such intricate stories that have you enthralled and contemplating so many things.
I loved how this book is centered around a noble forced to spend the remainder of his days in a hotel, but not just any hotel, the hotel of Moscow. Being a major hub of the city, so many different characters come and go through this hotel and our Count had conversations and befriends so many of them.
Between these scenes of budding relationships that make the Count start to realize what this new Russia looks like even though he cannot experience it first hand, Towles offers some great historical background so we could understand what was changing around the Count.
Many different times the Count has to come to terms with differences in this new world and he also has to deal with a different lifestyle than he is used to. But he deals with it with such grace and optimism that you can't help but admiring him and routing for him all along.
I loved so many of the other main characters as well. There were such different personalities but each were so important in shaping the Count and helping him through the 40 years of being confined to the hotel that this book goes through.
A perfect blend of fiction and historical accuracy, this book was exciting and intriguing and made me yearn for more at all times.
Synopsis: When, in 1922, he is deemed an unrepentant aristocrat by a Bolshevik tribunal, the count is sentenced to house arrest in the Metropol, a grand hotel across the street from the Kremlin. Rostov, an indomitable man of erudition and wit, has never worked a day in his life, and must now live in an attic room while some of the most tumultuous decades in Russian history are unfolding outside the hotel’s doors. Unexpectedly, his reduced circumstances provide him a doorway into a much larger world of emotional discovery.