Thursday, January 7, 2021

A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles


In 1922 Count Alexander Rostov is deemed an unrepentant aristocrat by a Bolshevik tribunal and 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, 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  discovery.

It is with sheer delight that I move this from my 2021 Book Challenge list to my Best of 2021 list. I read it first of my challenges simply because there are so many requests at the library that I wouldn't be able to renew it. 

It is a wonderful balance of whimsy and history, fairy tale and reality. It tells us how to survive the rules imposed by others and how to turn dreams into reality. 

I didn't expect to be breathlessly excited by the last act but I couldn't turn the pages fast enough. Not a thing was introduced that wasn't called back into use by the end. And the end was absolutely perfect. Now I've got to buy my own copy.

6 comments:

  1. Post a longer review so I can read your take! I read this for a UD alumni discussion and we had much argument over whether it was good or was just self-important. Most of the debate centered around whether the writing (e.g. relegating the "un-person-ing" of the violin teacher to a wry footnote; only one real "bad guy") ended up making too light of the regime, thus changing the whole tone from one of real danger (or real conversion/change for anyone) to "meh, no real trouble will hit anyone you care about."
    Something like with Pulp Fiction: did backseat guy getting shot make audiences reflect on the problem of casual violence and their reaction to it, or did it just pretend that was the aim while really just adding to the problem?

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    1. We will be reading and discussing this on the A Good Story is Hard to Find podcast but not until midyear. So more indepth thoughts will be up then but that's a while to wait.

      I know that reactions fall in one of two camps - light fluff or good. Clearly I fall in the good story camp. I felt that we are told and shown about plenty of the brutality of the Soviet era with things like the poet going to the gulag and Nina disappearing. But that wasn't the point of this book. It is the acknowledged background to a story about the count and the community inside the hotel. I'd put it more in the Jane Austen camp than the Dickens camp, for example -- poverty and cruelty are part of the worlds in which they live but Austen doesn't focus on it and Dickens does. In many ways it reminded me of The Grand Budapest Hotel. Maybe it is fluff, though I think there is more to it than that, but if so then it is good fluff. With delightful writing.

      Not sure if that is enough of an answer to your question.

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    2. Thanks for the response! I like the Dickens/Austen comparison; that helps me be able to appreciate the story elements for what they are (the wine labels! I *really* liked that bit!) and I do agree that it's well-written.
      I still lean towards it leading book clubs all over America to feel chipper about the Soviets while missing the likeness between themselves and the partying "reporters" in the hotel bar (she said in a superior tone). Also, I think I'm just annoyed at audiences' total failure to realize how the whole thing with the poem played out; summaries, and the (physics) professor who chose this book for the alumni book club, got the authorship backwards. So if everyone misses that, what else are they oblivious to, both in the story and the reality behind the story?

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    3. I think everyone gets the reality of what was really going on. The author makes sure of that. I can't help people like whoever upset you by not focussing on those elements but, again, those realities are not the point of the book. Take a look at all the lit about the USSR, Revolution, etc. Think of The Grand Budapest Hotel. It may not be to your taste because it is so light and the background is heavy. But there is a place for light stuff even amidst the hard things. :-)

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  2. Agree, Julie. This book isn't about conveying the full historical significance of Revolution. I too had that expectations when I started reading it. But then realized it was really about an individual man choosing to live through point of history with grace and purpose. It's not "fluff" if you really consider the personal fortitude and resilience the Count showed and ask yourself "how would I have reacted?"

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    1. Agreed about it not being fluff in exactly the same way that Jane Austen isn't fluff. Her books seem as if no one does anything but go to parties and drink tea, but there's so much going on internally. And this is the same.

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