"A Gentleman in Moscow" by Amor Towles

Entertaining but not challenging. 

In the immediate aftermath of the civil war following the Russian revolution, an aristocrat living in Moscow's Hotel Metropole (but who has written a poem supporting the revolutionaries) is sentenced to house arrest in the hotel for the rest of his life. 

The theme of the book is, I think, to show the shabbiness and inefficiency and petty corruption of the soviet system by contrasting it with a man living in the best hotel in Moscow. Really? Bit of a false contrast, I submit. I suppose it is meant to show how good breeding and good manners triumph over boorish oiks. Being the perfect gentlemen protects him against all hardships. Except he doesn't experience any hardships. Granted, he has lost his liberty. Granted, he has been moved from a suite to a tiny room on the top floor. But he eats at the best restaurant in town, he drinks the finest cocktails, the staff are almost unanimously wonderful to him. His is a life of leisure and play. 

There are a lot of lovely characters and they're all nice to one another and they all love the Count and bad things only happen to them when they are away from the hotel in the dreadful wilderness that is soviet Russia. None of them experiences any real emotion. They are superficial. This is a fairy tale and they have the emotional depth of fairy tale characters.

The Count never seems to get angry. He never gets bored, he never gets ill. He never despairs. He decides to kill himself but he doesn't go through with it and I didn't have any gut understanding of either why he wanted to kill himself nor why he didn't do it. It seems the moment just ... sort of ... passed.

The Count is perfect in every way. He has a superb palate, he is a fantastic marksman, he charms everyone (except for the weaselly waiter who becomes the hotel manager), he is such a sensational lover that a world-famous actress sleeps with him every time she comes to Moscow over a period of at least twenty years, he is always perfectly groomed and dressed and he is a perfect raconteur, full of amusing stories with wisdom at their heart. But then almost everyone else in this book is perfect, including the child he adopts who is naturally brilliantly talented at the piano. 

Perhaps the book is a satire. Perhaps you are meant to ask questions like: who is paying the hotel bill for the Count because his secret stash of gold pieces seem to be reserved for special occasions rather than everyday luxury? Perhaps you are meant to conclude that parisitical aristocrats like the Count should be wiped out in a revolution. But I don't think the author has that depth of understanding.

For example, in one of two occasions, the Count leaves the hotel because someone he cares for is injured and he has to rush her to hospital. But the soviet hospital is starved of resources and the care is sub-standard. Never mind! The Count has made friends and magically an expert doctor appears and whisks the patient away to the better hospital for the very best of treatment. And nowhere is there any realisation that non-aristocrats, including the hotel staff who actually have to work for a living, are condemned to the sub-standard hospital. 

This is one of the few occasions when the outside world impinges upon the Count. Granted, he is not allowed outside the hotel. But we are supposed to believe that the Stalinist purges and the Second World War had no impact on his charmed existence. One of the (one star) reviews on goodreads compared this book with Titus Groan in which almost ball of the action  takes place in an isolated castle. But at least TG has characters.

This book has only two-dimensional characters and, despite the fact that the action takes place over more than thirty years, not a single character has any development.

It is elegantly written. It is fun. But it is an entertainment. All the chapter headings are made entirely of words that begin with A. Apparently, in a chat at a bookstore, Towles said this was because the book "has an element of play and a touch of magic about it". It's a fairy story. You're not supposed to take this book seriously. 

Selected quotes:

• "In the Revolution's aftermath - with its economic declines, failed crops, and halted trade - refined ingredients became as scarce in Moscow as butterflies at sea." (Part One, An Anglican Ashore) I suspect that for the proletariat they were always rare.
• "Rather than being tools of self-discovery, mirrors tended to be tools of self-deceit. How many times had he watched as a young beauty turned thirty degrees before her mirror to ensure that she saw herself to the best advantage?" (Part One, An Appointment) I think I would have avoided the repetition of the word 'tools' by changing the second half of the first sentence to 'mirrors tended to be used for self-deciet'.
• "A new generation owes a measure of thanks to every member of the previous generation. Our elders planted fields and fought in wars, they advanced the arts and sciences, and generally made sacrifices on our behalf. So by their efforts, however humble, they have earned a measure of our gratitude and respect." (Part One, Anyway) Yes but.  This also works the other way around. Our elders did things that influenced the future for the worse. So they have earned our curses. 
• "What can a first consideration tell us about anyone? ... Human beings are so capricious, so complex, so delightfully contradictory, that they deserve not only our consideration, but our reconsideration." (Boom Two, An Actress, An Apparition, An Apiary)
• "Exile was the punishment that God meted out to Adam in the very first chapter of the human comedy, and that He meted out to Cain a few pages later." (Book Two, Adieu)
• "History is the business of identifying momentous events from the comfort of a high-back chair." (Book Three, Arachne's Art)
• "The Confederacy of the Humbled ... know each other at a glance. For having fallen suddenly from grace, those in the Confederacy share a certain perspective. Knowing beauty, influence, fame, and privilege to be borrowed rather than bestowed, they are not easily impressed. They are not quick to envy or take offense. They certainly do not scour the papers in search of their own names. They remain committed to living among their peers, but they greet adulation with caution, ambition with sympathy, and condescension with an inward smile." (Book Three, An Afternoon Assignation)
• "For a moment, the Man of Intent was a Man Who Didn't Know What to Do." (Book Five Arrivederci)
• "He was wise enough to know that life does not proceed by leaps and bounds. It unfolds." (Book Five, Adulthood)

I think that the theme of the book is summed up by one of the pronouncements of the judge who sentences Count Rostov to the hotel: "History has shown charm to be the final ambition of the leisured class."(Prologue).  Once more, I start to wonder whether the whole book is intended as a satire. But I don't think so.

Yet again a "New York Times Bestseller" fails to deliver the goods.

June 2023; 462 pages

This review was written by the author of Bally and Bro, Motherdarling  and The Kids of God