Book Report: A Gentleman in Moscow

4. Amor Towles, A Gentleman in Moscow (2016) (2/15/22) (BB#3)

The other day I met my friend Barb for lunch and a walk, and we, as always, talked books. She mentioned this one, said she loved it. I knew I owned it. (Turns out, I owned it twice over: in paperback and in hardback.) When I got home, I sought it out. And dived in.

The pundits on the back cover call it transfixing, irresistible, delightful, beautiful, joyful. It is all those things. I totally enjoyed this book: gobbled it up in a few days. 

It's the story, tout court, of a Russian aristocrat hauled before a Soviet tribunal in 1922 at age thirty-three and sentenced to eternal house arrest: in the luxurious Metropol Hotel in downtown Moscow. He'd already been living there for four years, but now he is consigned to the garret—a hundred square feet (which he soon doubles, by accessing the next room over through his closet). 

Over the next thirty-plus years, he makes many friends—the hotel chef, the maitre d', the concierge, a nine-year-old girl who grows up to become a comrade, a seamstress, another small child whom he fathers, a Party monitor. We learn about his life before, about his homeland of Nizhny Novgorod, land of apple trees, and his sister and his old apartment mate. In the end, his life is as rich as any could be, regardless of the circumstances.

Towles is a wonderful writer, both technically (his language!) and in terms of imagination. 

I did feel a bit hermetically sealed into the hotel (our hero, Count Alexander Rostov, is not allowed, on pain of death, to set foot outside—though at one point, or maybe two, he does leave, to our great relief). We hear nothing about the atrocities committed by Stalin, or about WWII (though the story ends in 1954). But nevertheless, the joy of this book is seeing all the life that can happen without the possibility, or even necessity, of escape from a confined space. 

Towles himself says he wants to "gather together a pile of brightly colored shards of glass" and swirl them into a kaleidoscopic view. He does this well. The historical import of place and time may be somewhat elusive, but the life he conveys is lovely.

I flagged many passages, and may transcribe one or two later on. For now, I just want to count this big book (not quite 500 pages, but close enough) done. Huzzah!

Here is an interesting interview with the author.