From the Bookshelf of Book Riot's Read Harder Challenge…

A Gentleman in Moscow

Amor Towles

Finish date: January 25, 2017

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Sep 30, 2016 KT rated it it was amazing

Disclaimer: I received an advance copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Reading a book by Amor Towles is a lot like watching a pre-code Hollywood film. There's a charm and wit that infuses the story, whatever the situation for the characters. His previous novel, "The Rules of Civility" followed a working class girl as she navigated the upper echelons of NY society with only her wit and poise as her weapon and armor. "A Gentleman in Moscow" follows a man on the opposite trajectory. Disclaimer: I received an advance copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Reading a book by Amor Towles is a lot like watching a pre-code Hollywood film. There's a charm and wit that infuses the story, whatever the situation for the characters. His previous novel, "The Rules of Civility" followed a working class girl as she navigated the upper echelons of NY society with only her wit and poise as her weapon and armor. "A Gentleman in Moscow" follows a man on the opposite trajectory. Count Alexander Rostov goes from nobility to a simple hotel waiter in the aftermath of the Bolshevik revolution in Russia.

Tried and found guilty of being an aristocrat, Rostov is saved by a revolutionary poem he once wrote and instead of being executed or sent to Siberia, he is sentenced to life imprisonment in the hotel where he lives. Over the next several decades, we stay with him as people come and go from his life and people's fortunes rise and fall depending on which way the political wind is blowing.

What begins as a punishment ends up a refuge, as one by one, the people he knows fall prey to the whims of Stalinism. His oldest friend, Mishka, a scholar and revolutionary of the working class eventually observes, "Who would have imagined ... when you were sentenced to life in the Metropol all those years ago, that you had just become the luckiest man in all of Russia?"

What could be a dull book is made lively and colorful by the Count's unflappable charm. He keeps the reader going, and the friends he makes within the hotel, old and young, create a quirky family that stick together and steal small freedoms under an oppressive regime. Towles paces the book perfectly, as the years go by and we stay within the hotel, the stakes rise as the count acquires a daughter and develops a nemesis. And when you least expect it, Towles inserts a mystery and a caper that pull you in as the action suddenly speeds towards the end.

One does have to put aside any expectations of reading a true history of this period of Russian history. While the story takes place during one of the most horrific times to be a Russian citizen, the action takes place within a bubble where the worst of the horrors don't permeate. The story makes reference to what is going on outside the walls of the hotel, but for the most part, the reader is shielded from the brunt of it along with the count. What you are here for is the characters and the author's turn of phrase, rather than the harsh reality of a historical text. ...more

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Aug 13, 2020 Kristen rated it really liked it

4.5 stars. In the course of reading this book, I stopped and read two other books (something I rarely do), but it kept calling me back.

A book about a man accustomed to traveling and being in the world, who then finds himself sentenced to live in lifelong house arrest in a Moscow hotel following the Revolution — whose world was now so small — felt oddly fitting during SIP. What started as pleasant but perhaps a little slow evolved into a deeply felt book, both enjoyable and thoughtful. By the la ...more

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Nov 27, 2021 Kaitlin rated it really liked it

Shelves: fiction, historical

I enjoyed this book a lot—great characters, beautiful setting, and an interesting plot. A long read for me, it took awhile to make my way through it, but that was a nice change. As a history lover I enjoyed this period piece about Russian and how it changed from a country of tsars to a communist country through the characters life.

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