Books: A Gentleman in Moscow By Amor Towles (2016)

 

"A Gentleman in Moscow begins in 1922, when Count Alexander Rostov 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.”

 

A lot of this book seems a bit improbable, at times, which is not to say is a bad thing. It also can be dense with a bit too many historical observations of Russia and Moscow during the Stalin era, which at times, makes the book a bit busy and overcrowded. On the other hand, though, these passages seemly have little to do with the plot, so I often pondered if the tale could’ve worked if it was set in Paris, London, or even in Germany during the same period. Also, as one reviewer pointed out, this book is like Eloise, “if Eloise were set in a twee version of Stalinist Russia.”

 

There is a lot of impish humor here, as the Count tallies his days and nights in the Metropol with an assortment of people, including a moody chef and a French maître d’. The arrival of nine year-old Nina early in the book gives the Count many days of fun, as she is clever and most articulate. They, like his other friends, have several capers and this sort makes perpetual bachelor feel a sense of pride (though years later, when Nina has married, she returns to the hotel with some cautious, hidden worlds dealing with goings on against Stalin and asks the count to take care of her daughter Sofia for maybe a month or two. Obviously the reader can surmise that Nina won’t be coming back anytime soon). Then the Count must worry about people noticing he’s taking care of a 5-year-old girl.

 

Still, as the decades unfurl, the as Nina becomes an accomplished musician, the Count’s long-game continues on. Highlights include one of the capers where the Count, the chef, and the maître d' conspire to scrounge the ingredients for a perfect bouillabaisse from war-depleted Moscow. It takes three years, but when everything has been acquired, there is a mostly humorous set piece on how they try to keep this hidden from a sinister hotel waiter and a man known as the Bishop.

 

For those itching to get out now that spring and summer are around the corner along with the lifting of quarantine due to the COVID, they may not want to take the time to read this charming book due to its verbal density, but it’s rewarding in the end and just as much a valentine (as was Amor Towles Rules of Civility) to an era when books were a bit more complex and literary. Were words and kindness was the way of the world.