Book Review of A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles
Author: Amor Towles
ISBN: 978-0-670-02619-7
Publisher: Viking
Type of book: Moscow, Russia, 1922-1954, wealth, breeding, culture, class, Metropol, trapped, claustrophobia, reading, literature, friendship
Year it was published: 2016
Summary:
The mega-bestseller with more than 1.5 million readers that is soon to be a major television series
He can't leave his hotel. You won't want to.
From the New York Times bestselling author of Rules of Civility--a transporting novel about a man who is ordered to spend the rest of his life inside a luxury hotel.
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, 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 entry into a much larger world of emotional discovery.
Brimming with humor, a glittering cast of characters, and one beautifully rendered scene after another, this singular novel casts a spell as it relates the count's endeavor to gain a deeper understanding of what it means to be a man of purpose.
Characters:
Main character was Count Alexei Rostov, an aristocratic dandy who cares more for appearances and wealth than anything else. His previous life included meeting and hanging out at the happening spots so to speak. To me he was not likable whatsoever. There are secondary characters, but honestly, I couldn't really remember or care about them.
Theme:
Read it from cover to cover, but had no idea what it was trying to say...
Plot:
The story is in third person narrative from Count Rostovs point of view. There is also a formula that was used by the author which should have made the story interesting, but didn't. The entire 462 pages are spent in a hotel, and oh boy I really felt that. Claustrophobic and desperate in my opinion. How I wished that something, anything would happen! Please go out and live life, I would implore the character. But nope, the hotel. At first I thought I would like it, but as the story went on, and on, and on, I realized how much I found it boring.
Author Information:
(From the book)
Amor Towles was born and raised in the Boston area. He graduated from Yale University and received an MA in English from Stanford University. An investment professional for more than twenty years, he now devotes himself full time to writing. His first novel, Rules of Civility, published in 2011, was a New York Times bestseller in both hardcover and paperback. Towles lives in Manhattan with his wife and two children.
Opinion:
A historical fiction that doesn't take place in WW2; Russian nobility and details as well as reading. These should have been hallmarks of a book I should have loved! Instead, I ended up detesting this book. Even now, thinking back on it, I can't really pinpoint on why I didn't like it. I think that first of all I found it, well, boring. I am no stranger to reading and loving long novels ( Tale of Genji, Dream of the Red Chamber, Gone with the Wind, etc.) And it's a very stuffy novel for me that doesn't really represent Russia at the time. Yes bad things were going on at the time, but Count Alex Rostov doesn't act or think like a real Russian should. He is more European/American. Ugh, unfortunately it's a bitter lesson I am learning: what is popular and loved by everyone will not be loved by me, am sad to say. While others adore Charles Dickens or even Memoirs of a Geisha, I am sad that I have to put this book on the list where those two languish.
0 out of 5
(0: Stay away unless a masochist 1: Good for insomnia 2: Horrible but readable; 3: Readable and quickly forgettable, 4: Good, enjoyable 5: Buy it, keep it and never let it go.)
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