A Gentleman in Moscow

In the past month I have read two brilliant books.  By my reckoning.  The first took me a good while to get through.  Four hundred and fifty plus pages of text in a small font, and beautiful, rich writing to savour.  This is not a book you speed through.  

A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles

There is an old world elegance about this novel, which is set in an era a few years after the Russian an Revolution in a period of violent upheaval. A handsome count named Alexander Rostov has been summoned before the Emergency Committee of the People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs and accused of writing a counter-revolutionary poem. The trial transcript offers an indication of the count’s blithe resistance to the spirit of the times.  Asked to state his occupation, he replies, “It is not the business of a gentleman to have occupations.” Only high-ranking friends keep him from being thrown against a wall and shot. Instead, he’s declared a “Former Person” and sentenced to life imprisonment in Moscow’s Hotel Metropol.   Count Alexander Rostov nonetheless lives the fullest of lives, discovering the depths of his humanity. 

The Hotel Metropol is a grand Art Nouveau palace — an actual place, still standing. It was constructed at the turn of the century and soon seized by the communists to house bureaucrats and impress foreign guests. The count, though, is consigned to a tiny room on the top floor, crammed with a few pieces of his fine furniture and a set of porcelain plates. This is a character who has “opted for the life of the purposefully unrushed.” He was raised to appreciate the great conveniences of life, such as keeping “a carriage waiting at the door of one party, so that on a moment’s notice it can whisk you away to another.” Now, that extravagant life must somehow be adjusted to the tight confines of a servant’s bedroom. No matter: The man makes the home, not the other way around, and the count is convinced that “by the smallest of one’s actions one can restore some sense of order to the world.” 

Spread across four decades, this is in all ways a great novel, a nonstop pleasure brimming with charm, personal wisdom, and philosophic insight. Though Stalin and Khrushchev make their presences felt, Towles largely treats politics as a dark, distant shadow. The chill of the political events occurring outside the Metropol is certainly felt, but for the Count and his friends, the passage of time is "like the turn of a kaleidoscope."

This is not a novel of thrilling conflicts so much as charming encounters.  As the years pass, the count always behaves as a perfect gentleman. He never complains about his confinement — never even admits that it is a confinement. He entertains attractive guests. He spars good-naturedly with a staff member who resents his refined manner. A man of refined taste in wine, food, and literature, he strives to maintain a daily routine, exploring the nooks and crannies of the hotel, bonding with staff, accepting the advances of attractive women, and forming what proves to be a deeply meaningful relationship with a spirited young girl, Nina. It is the relationship with Nina that ultimately delivers to the reader a suspenseful and thrilling denouement with an ending that allows the reader to speculate as to the fate of the two principal characters in the book.