A Gentleman in Moscow

Charming but almost unbearably twee, A Gentleman in Moscow is the sugar-coated account of a wealthy aristocrat who is remarkably allowed to live by the Bolsheviks and sentenced to live out the rest of his life in a fancy hotel in 1922 Russia.

Content warnings:
- cissexism
- romani slur
- suicide

Representation:
- N/A

Count Alexander Rostov is condemned as an unrepentant aristocrat by the Bolsheviks, but a revolutionary poem he wrote years ago saves his life. Instead of being shot, he’s put under “house arrest” in the Metropol, a fancy hotel in Moscow. Despite a rocky beginning, he begins to think of himself as the “luckiest man in the world” after creating friendships with the guests and staff.

Okay, so I was completely charmed by show more maybe the first 150-200 pages by the Count and the gorgeous prose. The Count quickly became a favorite character when he discerned the musical key of his bedsprings by jumping on them -- but my love for him didn’t last. He was just so gratingly good at everything, and he thought it his duty to educate everyone, even interrupting people’s dinners to do so (which doesn’t really strike me as something that’s particularly gentlemanly, but what do I know). His character arc is fairly flat too, as are the other character arcs, which in a 450-page book with very little plot, is incredibly aggravating.

I’m aware of what this book is about and what it’s trying to say … and it having been published (and/or popular) when much of the world was in lockdown from the pandemic makes its themes that much more meaningful. So many people just wanted an escape, something hopeful and lovely, and this book is all of that. Reading about the Count, also in a “lockdown” of sorts, finding and making his own happiness in the small things is very satisfying.

But knowing that it was all happening in the comfy, plush Metropol while out in the rest of Russia most people were dying and starving and suffering (courtesy of a few footnotes written in the same cheerful style) made me very uncomfortable. And it felt like a very ugly choice to have the focus be on situations such as the Count lamenting over the fact that because of the awful Bolsheviks, all the bottles of wine in his favorite Metropol restaurant are now unlabeled (how will he ever find the right one to pair with his fancy meal now?!).

What really began to bother me about three-fourths of the way through the book was the way the Count, who already seemed a bit too talented and polished and perfect and adored, only seemed to befriend people who were also wildly talented. We have his lover, a famous actress; his daughter, a piano prodigy; and the two close friends he makes at the hotel: a world-class chef and the skilled maître d’. But we never really get a close-enough look at them to see any flaws--or any deeper characterization--besides what can be used to offer the Count or enrich his own characterization.

The Count did go through some growth, which … thank god, because he was incredibly selfish, full of himself, and insufferable throughout most of the novel. He did learn to live a little more, risk a little more, etc., but while that might work in a story set somewhere else, it was baffling here. His friends at the restaurant where he eventually worked had tough lives outside the Metropol (shown via a few sections in their povs--which were some of my favorite parts), but the Count never asked about their lives or showed any concern for them or even the outside world at all--until it directly concerned him or his life, of course.

But all this isn’t to say I absolutely hated everything about this book. The writing is superb. Amor Towles knows what he’s doing there. The story was never boring to read, even if it progressed at a slow pace, because of that. I loved experiencing his writing style.

I also adored the beekeeper, even if his part was very small. The two scenes when the Count went up to see him, a character who was so very different from who he was, stuck with me the most. They’re the most vivid scenes that come to mind when I think of the book and what I liked.

I just wished there would be some kind of commentary or contrast made between the Count’s sheltered and almost fantasy-like world inside the Metropol and the harsh reality outside it. Throughout the entire novel, the Count never once thought about his past or his class with a critical eye. But I get it: that’s not what this book was about. It's obviously found a loving audience, which is great, but it didn’t resonate with me. show less

“It was suddenly as if the book were not a dining room table at all, but a sort of Sahara. And having emptied his canteen, the Count would soon be crawling across its sentences with the peak of each hard-won page revealing but another page beyond. . . .”



This book was a huge let-down. Amazon tells me, its print edition has 378 pages. Those must be metres high and wide because I swear it were 10.000 for me. In fact, reading this book felt exactly like my opening quote.



Count Alexander Rostov has the bad luck to be born into a family of aristocrats during revolutionary times. His only redeeming feature from the perspective of his “comrades” is a poem he wrote. Which is why they don’t put him against a wall but into life-long show more house arrest inside his favourite hotel, the Metropol in Moscow. Ok, well, he’s moved from his favourite suite to the attic but ultimately, Alexander makes the very best of it or – as the blurb puts it – “can a life without luxury be the richest of all?”

The answer, sadly, is no. A resounding “no” because the Count – being a self-declared “gentleman” lives after a code of honour that more reliably imprisons him than any government ever could. He reads what he’s supposed to read (Montaigne, but in his most brutish way he uses the book to prop up his table! Oh heaven, what a villainous miscreant!), lives where they tell him and lives out a quaint live which, to be honest, is simply immensely boring.

During his first year of house arrest Rostov meets Nina who is (metaphorically) going to become his daughter’s mother. Their meeting is amusing and their adventures raised my hopes for a good book but, alas, it was not to be. Nina becomes first a pioneer, next an exile and ultimately a victim of her Soviet dream and we only ever get reminiscences about her. An opportunity lost.

Now, the Count gets settled into a life that’s the very definition of twee and is actually happy with it. He meets a beautiful (willowy) woman whom he “consorts with” but would never risk his modest but gentlemanly bachelorhood for her. Not even “moving together” in the hotel ever crosses his mind.

He twists a young girl whom he calls his daughter into a younger version of himself whom he basically (and gentlemanly!) has to “push from the nest” because she’s afraid of the world beyond the doors of her hotel home. Which is mostly the Count’s very own fault.



Here’s an example so you can make your own mid up – it's pretty much the best example of the strenuous way of telling a non-story:



“After all, what can a first impression tell us about someone we’ve just met for a minute in the lobby of a hotel? For that matter, what can a first impression tell us about anyone? Why, no more than a chord can tell us about Beethoven, or a brushstroke about Botticelli. By their very nature, human beings are so capricious, so complex, so delightfully contradictory, that they deserve not only our consideration, but our reconsideration—and our unwavering determination to withhold our opinion until we have engaged with them in every possible setting at every possible hour.”



Why, yes, I haven’t made that up – he did it!

Even worse, the characters don’t develop in any way. The Count at 32 (at the beginning of the book) feels pretty much exactly the same (namely like a wise old sage!) in all aspects that matter (yes, he takes one step after another but that’s not what I mean) compared to himself at 64 (at the end of the book). His friends are the same as well; they’re all noble, self-deprecating and revere “His Excellency”, the Count without ever criticising or questioning him.

We don’t learn much about “Russia under[going] decades of tumultuous upheaval”; in fact such small matters as World War II are mostly skipped or “charmingly” referred to. All that ever matters is the count, the willow and his daughter.

Only during a few key moments in the book do we get to see real emotions and passions. If and when we do, though, it certainly “shakes the dust from the chandeliers.”. Because one thing’s for sure: Towles can definitely write. Let’s take a look at Rostov remembering something as simple as bread:



“The first thing that struck him was actually the black bread. For when was the last time he had even eaten it? If asked outright, he would have been embarrassed to admit. Tasting of dark rye and darker molasses, it was a perfect complement to a cup of coffee. And the honey? What an extraordinary contrast it provided. If the bread was somehow earthen, brown, and brooding, the honey was sunlit, golden, and gay. But there was another dimension to it. . . . An elusive, yet familiar element . . . A grace note hidden beneath, or behind, or within the sensation of sweetness.”



An author who can so richly and evocatively write on such a simple subject most certainly deserves my respect but the story is so lacking it’s the book’s ruin. Whenever passions run high, we really get to see the quality of writing but there is way too much of what I like to call “non-content” - filling material, literary waste products – that gather and celebrate dark masses in honour of their ilk:



“For the record, the Count had risen shortly after seven. Having completed fifteen squats and fifteen stretches, having enjoyed his coffee, biscuit, and a piece of fruit (today a tangerine), having bathed, shaved, and dressed, he kissed Sofia on the forehead and departed from their bedroom with the intention of reading the papers in his favorite lobby chair. Descending one flight, he exited the belfry and traversed the hall to the main stair, as was his habit.”



For the record, I know the Count to be a slave of his habits and I really couldn’t care less (especially in such detail!) about the exact measure of his eccentrics.

Said eccentricities lie not only within the Count but inside the author as well and once fancy strikes (he’d probably prefer the less prosaic “providence”) him it’s “as if Life itself has summoned them” (the eccentricities!) and force him to randomly capitalise words. Must be the literary adoption of wagging one’s finger, I guess.

It’s truly sad because the book has an interesting premise and the potential for greatness which it can’t fully realise despite having something to say:



“I have had countless reasons to be proud of you; and certainly one of the greatest was the night of the Conservatory competition. But the moment I felt that pride was not when you and Anna brought home news of your victory. It was earlier in the evening, when I watched you heading out the hotel’s doors on your way to the hall. For what matters in life is not whether we receive a round of applause; what matters is whether we have the courage to venture forth despite the uncertainty of acclaim.”


Only the ending – amusingly exactly the piece most proponents of this book loathe – somewhat reconciles me – the Count finally overcomes his artificial convictions and starts living a little, next to a willow...

A satisfying end to a book that seemed to never end but eventually came to a proper close.

Amor Towles writes like I would imagine Count Knigge on a charming rampage.







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I am basking in the afterglow of this novel. It is among the BEST I have read this year. Towles’ writing style is so comfortable, his command of the subject so complete, his humor so subtle and charming, that I could have read on and on.

In 1922, Count Alexander Rostov, an aristocrat who is saved from being shot by having written a significant poem in favor of the people, is sentenced to house arrest at the Metropol Hotel. He is removed from his suite of rooms there to a dusty attic room that isn’t even used any longer by service staff. His life might appear to be over, but life is strange, particularly in Russian novels and neither Rostov nor the reader could imagine the life that is in store for our hero.

The novel is a mixture of show more War and Peace, Dr. Zhivago and John le Carre. It has exotic setting, class, philosophy, and mystery. There is plot (the story is superb), intense character development (I LOVED these characters and felt like I knew them all), and a sense of humor and style that conjures up Russia at every stage from troikas in the 1800 snows to the deprivations of the communists. I was transformed by the descriptions of life in the Metropol. I have never eaten in such a place as the Boyarsky, but I could see the candlelit room and almost taste the dishes so expertly laid before the diners. This novel’s ambiance is palpable.

In the end, however, what makes this novel stand heads and shoulders above the average is the Count. He is one of the most delightful characters imaginable. He is someone I want to know. I want to spend an evening in his company, I want to listen to his childhood tales, laugh at his jokes, admire his integrity and courage. Heck, I want to watch a Bogart movie with him...guess which one?

I try to imagine what reader would not enjoy this book, and it seems impossible to me that they exist. It defies genre or classification. It is just good, good writing. Read it. show less

It is prominently displayed and heaped high on the tables at Barnes & Noble. This copy was sent, thoughtfully inscribed, as a gift from Mat Parke, who knows my interest in both Sovietology and swank hotels. Halfway through I concluded that the Law of Inverse Contrarianism was at work (last seen vouching for the musical Hamilton): If most people say something is really good, it’s probably pretty good.

It is set almost entirely in Moscow’s Hotel Metropol, where Count Alexander Rostov has been sentenced to house arrest by the Bolsheviks. There are worse houses in which to be house-arrested.

(When I was in Moscow in 2003 I spent a fair amount of time in the lobby of the Metropol watching CNN International, looking for news of my show more brother’s infantry unit that had just invaded Iraq. I was staying with my student group at the rather less glitzy Hotel Moskva on the other side of Teatralnaya Square, but here’s the thing about fancy hotel lobbies: They don’t care which hotel you sleep at. Incidentally, my father and my uncle also stayed at the Moskva during a trip to the USSR in 1986. Shortly after my stay it was demolished and replaced with a Four Seasons, that, oddly, is just as ugly as the one it succeeded.)

Mat, who was enchanted by this book enough to send it to me, reports that he then circled back to Towles’ first novel, The Rules of Civility, and that he was not so charmed by that one, so I won’t bother. But this one is hugely entertaining, and frequently moving. show less

2020 Update: I've never empathized more with the idea of living life within the confines of a single building.

Ultimately, I am reminded of an elaborate, beautiful confection, perhaps this Spanische Windtorte:


From The Great British Bakeoff, Season 2



Elaborately constructed, lovely, sweet, best enjoyed at a particular moment, not preserved at a later date.

Similarly, A Gentleman in Moscow is filled with lovely writing about a Russian noble, pre-Revolution, who is sentenced to ‘house’-arrest in a famous Moscow hotel. Towles states, “while arriving at my hotel in Geneva (for the eighth year in a row), I recognized some of the people lingering in the lobby from the year before. It was as if they had never left. Upstairs in my room, I show more began playing with the idea of a novel in which a man is stuck in a grand hotel.” It is a delicious concept that is turned into the examination of a life through time.

“..not simply of momentous events, but of all the little actions and interactions that constitute our daily lives – either deliberate or spontaneous, inevitable or unforeseen.”

Interestingly, it is a different take than a typical ‘imprisonment,’ because it is not about introspection of him own life or those around him, more like a biography of someone without direct political position but whom which was close enough to be impacted by and have his own effect upon them. When I was partway through, I remarked to my mom, “now this is the sort of book we should have read to create interest in history,” but I now think I would like to retract that thought; this is like sparking interesting in history through eating a slice of Spanish Windtorte; an elaborately constructed and sweet confection that crumbles when examined too closely.

Towles confesses that most of the book was organic to a long-time love of Russian writers and artist in ‘the Golden Age’,’ and he did some ‘applied research later. He notes, “I generally like to mix glimpses of history with flights of fancy until the reader isn’t exactly sure of what’s real and what isn’t.” There’s much to love here, but it is important to understand it’s disconnect from reality; like the cake, this is a highly specific, created view, not a grand window through time.

It is beautiful, it is hopeful, it is lacking in a driving plot, and it is, indeed, the movement of a life, so this was a book that took me weeks to read. But I didn’t mind at all; every time I picked it up, the world of Alexander Rostov became delightfully immersive. Unfortunately, because there wasn't a particular overarching conflict, it was also easy to set aside when needed. In this it reminded me of [b:The Night Circus|9361589|The Night Circus|Erin Morgenstern|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1387124618l/9361589._SY75_.jpg|14245059], in that it was an artistic creation more than a story demanding to be heard.

“But just as important, a careful accounting of days allows the isolated to note that another year of hardship has been endured; survived; bested. Whether they have found the strength to persevere through a tireless determination or some fool hearty optimism, those 365 hatch marks stand as proof of their indomitability.” show less

Count Alexander Rostov returns to Russia right after the Revolution, and finds himself on trial as a Former Person. He could have been sentenced to death but he is granted a reprieve, of sorts: house arrest at the Metropol Hotel.

What a lovely, lovely book. I was enthralled from the very beginning, from the epigraph and the trial's transcript on. The book is sweeping - covering several decades of the Count's life - and intimate, with the Metropol as setting allowing us to get to know a small cast of characters who come in and out of the story as it unfolds. Each sentence is carefully crafted and the narrator himself has personality, sometimes talking to the reader and other times including footnotes in a way that make you forget this is show more fiction and the Count a made-up character. If you enjoy character studies, beautiful writing and historical fiction, I can't recommend this book highly enough. show less

How can a book about a man who spends over thirty years living a gilded life and where so little seems to happen contain so much humanity?

Count Alexander Rostov — recipient of the Order of Saint Andrew, member of the Jockey Club, Master of the Hunt - is a "Former Person" - deemed an unrepentant aristocrat by a Bolshevik tribunal and has been sentenced to house arrest in Moscow's luxurious Metropol hotel, a grand hotel across the street from the Kremlin. There he lives out his days decorating the dining room with his dashing sense of style and good breeding. Rostov 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 show more doors. Unexpectedly, his reduced circumstances provide him a doorway into a much larger world of emotional discovery.

This is a novel that aims to charm and where flair is always the goal. And then there are gently funny digressions. Russia and all of its sufferings through these tumultuous decades seem almost incidental to the plot. When the outside world makes itself felt, it's usually as an excuse for a charming caper of some kind.

This novel is absolutely brimming with humour, has a delightful cast of characters, and one beautiful scene after another that follows Rostov’s journey to a deeper understanding of what it means to be a man. It was beautifully written and I read it with a permanent smile on my face. show less