[review] A Gentleman in Moscow (Amor Towles, 2016)
Upon reading the inside flap, Millennial readers might be immediately reminded of The Suite Life of Zack and Cody, and the twins whose antics wreak havoc in the lobby of the infamous Tipton Hotel.
Here too, our story unfolds in a hotel. In four-hundred pages of woven language emerges a man who teaches us dignity without ego, sophistication without seriousness. Count Alexander Rostov is a man not only of unmatched wit but also genuine kindness, and earns our admiration as a result.
The story: In 1922, “when the thirty-year old Count is deemed an unrepentant aristocrat by a Bolshevik tribunal, he is sentenced to house arrest in the Metropol, a grand hotel across the street from the Kremlin.” He lives there as some of the most tumultuous decades of Russian history unravel across the street.
Instead of wallowing away in confinement, the Count “masters his circumstances” and strikes up unlikely friendships that keep him engaged in the playground of his expansive mind. We, the lucky ones, are taken along for the ride, to his careful selecting of wines and dignified escapades.
For the Count, The Metropol Hotel provides an intellectual and social refuge, enabling him to further to cultivate interests and relationships. It is a mind-expanding book, and Towles respects his readers by writing with brevity and operating with self-restraint.
Despite the Count’s witness to the famous events of Russian history, the book is not political commentary. Although the Soviet Union is the novel’s setting, and policies are mentioned, opinions more specific than such policies’ general effect on the human condition rarely arise. The words capitalism, democracy, communism, and socialism are not mentioned even once. Instead, the novel is about the Count, friendship, and the meaning of gentleman, and chivalry.
“Of course that’s true! Well said!” was my recurring throughout this book. If for no other reason that Towles’ ability to synthesize our abstract hunches about things to concrete language, A Gentleman in Moscow is a worthy read.
It dovetails nicely The Necessity of Chivalry, a beautiful—and brief—essay by CS Lewis, where he discusses chivalry as the embodiment of two contradictory traits—humility and valor—and its necessity in the modern era (Respond to this email and I’ll send over the PDF.)
