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A Gentleman in Moscow: A Novel by Amor…
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A Gentleman in Moscow: A Novel (edition 2016)

by Amor Towles (Author)

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8,973509897 (4.38)1 / 740
"A Gentleman in Moscow immerses us in another elegantly drawn era with the story of Count Alexander Rostov. When, in 1922, he is deemed an unrepentant aristocrat by a Bolshevik tribunal, the count 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 a doorway into a much larger world of emotional discovery..."--… (more)
Member:AngeH
Title:A Gentleman in Moscow: A Novel
Authors:Amor Towles (Author)
Info:Viking (2016), Edition: 1, 480 pages
Collections:Your library
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Tags:to-read

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A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles

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 The Green Dragon: A Gentleman in Moscow10 unread / 10Sakerfalcon, November 2017

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Showing 1-5 of 493 (next | show all)
An all-time favorite. Perfect read for the middle of winter. ( )
  bookem | Mar 27, 2024 |
There’s so much acclaim for this book, yet other than an occasional moment between Rostov and the two youngest females in the story, I just wasn’t anywhere near as charmed by it as so many others appear to have been.

I’m okay with a leisurely pace if there’s enough story to justify it, but this book is over four hundred pages and it feels generous to say that maybe two hundred of those pages saw some semblance of story that moved forward. I don’t know if this was an attempt to echo “great” Russian novels or something, if so, I guess that was accomplished, as much like when I slogged my way through War and Peace many years ago, this too felt like the author must have been paid by the word, taking every opportunity to stretch into several pages what could have been conveyed in one concise paragraph. Like War and Peace, for me, reading this this felt more like an endurance test than a pleasure.

Too often there would be an extremely short burst of plot only to dip into lengthy disruptive passages of tedious details and research. Whenever this eventually got around to resuming the story, you’d get something akin to a recap, you’d be told the characters were older, told this or that happened, this person is growing up, that person’s career is floundering or flourishing, etc., but you see very little of any of it unfold or the relationships genuinely develop and deepen. I know this book has to have won awards and hearts for a reason, but it all felt so surface level to me, the way it was told in this repeated pattern of a bit of story (usually involving meals) followed by a dump of extraneous information, followed by a recap of the lives we didn’t actually see anyone living because while they were doing presumably interesting things off the page, on the page, the reader was stuck wading through those extraneous weeds. Or at least that was how I felt too much of the time, like I was stuck in a mostly stagnant cycle and missing out on key parts of the story, in particular Rostov’s transition into becoming a pivotal figure in a certain someone’s life and how that functioned for years without that person being removed, no one having any objection to it, etc., I needed more on that situation and how it could possibly have played out with so few hiccups of note.

Even though that situation was something I mostly enjoyed whenever the book meandered back to it, it was also part of another aspect of this novel I struggled with in addition to the pacing. I had a hard time with how fairytale easy everything goes here, that Rostov, a prisoner of sorts, could maintain that particular relationship unimpeded, that he still had so much freedom inside the hotel, so much access still to the finer things, and easy access to friendship and love and adoration, and even the ending, one of the rare bits of excitement in the entire novel, that too just struck me as a little too easy to ring true. I don’t know the real life history related to this, if hotel arrest in Moscow was as lackadaisical as it mostly appeared in this fictional take on it, so I could be totally off base, but I just found it challenging to buy that the Russia you always hear about would basically mollycoddle someone, that conditions wouldn’t be at least a little harsh.

When I read literary fiction as beloved as this one and don’t share in the prevailing sentiment, it does make me second guess my intelligence, like maybe I’m not smart enough to understand what was so great about this, and maybe that’s the case, maybe the depths of this just went over my head. All I know is that the way I experienced this book, it felt like it contained more filler than substance and even though I could feel the painstaking research seeping through nearly ever sentence, the story itself wasn’t all that believable. ( )
  SJGirl | Mar 25, 2024 |
A wonderful, rich, and satisfying book, beautifully and evocatively written. The best I’ve read in a long time. The dark threads of the political events following the Russian revolution woven through the plot gently and balanced perfectly by the strength of spirit, wisdom, humour, and compassion of the main character. I will definitely read more by this author. ( )
  wordbyword | Mar 14, 2024 |
Terrific book! Excellent premise, character development, plotting, evocation of Moscow in the early Soviet Union. Superb writing, full of wit, grace, and small surprises. ( )
  rscottm182gmailcom | Mar 12, 2024 |
This simply written story is unusually satisfying. It brings to mind both the idea that the relationships of one man can have far-reaching positive effects despite circumstances that conspire against him, and that if one adheres to one's values, then "by the smallest of one's actions one can restore some sense of order to the world....." ( )
  markm2315 | Mar 11, 2024 |
Showing 1-5 of 493 (next | show all)
Booklist
July 1, 2016
In his remarkable first novel, the best-selling Rules of Civility (2011), Towles etched 1930s New York in crystalline relief. Though set a world away in Moscow over the course of three decades, his latest polished literary foray into a bygone era is just as impressive. Sentenced as an incorrigible aristocrat in 1922 by the Bolsheviks to a life of house arrest in a grand Moscow hotel, Count Alexander Ilyich Rostov is spared the firing squad on the basis of a revolutionary poem he penned as an idealistic youth. Condemned, instead, to live his life confined to the indoor parameters of Metropol Hotel, he eschews bitterness in favor of committing himself to practicalities. As he carves out a new existence for himself in his shabby attic room and within the magnificent walls of the hotel-at-large, his conduct, his resolve, and his commitment to his home and to the hotel guests and staff together form a triumph of the human spirit. As Moscow undergoes vast political changes and countless social upheavals, Rostov remains, implacably and unceasingly, a gentleman. Towles presents an imaginative and unforgettable historical portrait.--Flanagan, Margaret Copyright 2016 Booklist
added by kthomp25 | editBooklist
 

» Add other authors

Author nameRoleType of authorWork?Status
Towles, Amorprimary authorall editionsconfirmed
Arjaan en Thijs van NimwegenTranslatorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Höbel, SusanneTranslatorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Smith, Nicholas GuyNarratorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Smith, RodneyPhotographersecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
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Epigraph
How well I remember

When it came as a visitor on foot
And dwelt a while amongst us
A melody in the semblance of a mountain cat.

Well, where is our purpose now?

Like so many questions
I answer this one
With the eye-averted peeling of a pear.

With a bow I bid goodnight
And pass through terrace doors
Into the simple splendors
Of another temperate spring;

But this much I know;

It is not lost among the autumn leaves on Peter's Square.
It is not among the ashes in the Athenaeum ash cans.
It is not inside the blue pagodas of your fine Chinoiserie.

It is not in Vronsky's saddlebags;
Not in Sonnet XXX, stanza one;
Not on twenty-seven red...

                                    Where Is It Now? (Lines 1-19)
                         Count Alexander Ilyich Rostov   1913
Dedication
For Stokley and Esmé
First words
At half past six on the twenty-first of June 1922, when Count Alexander Ilyich Rostov was escorted through the gates of the Kremlin onto Red Square, it was glorious and cool.
Quotations
Mindful of their surroundings, the three damsels would initially speak in the hushed voices of gentility; but swept away by the currents of their own emotions, their voices would inevitably rise, such that by 11:15, even the most discreet enjoyer of a pastry would have no choice but to eavesdrop on the thousand-layered complications of their hearts.
The crowded confusion of furniture gave the Count's little domain the look of a consignment shop in the Arbat.
Yes, some claimed Emile Zhukovsky was a curmudgeon and others called him abrupt. Some said he was a short man with a shorter temper.
It was a place where Russians cut from every cloth could come to linger over coffee, happen upon friends, stumble into arguments, or drift into dalliances—and where the lone diner seated under the great glass ceiling could indulge himself in admiration, indignation, suspicion, and laughter without getting up from his chair.
Tall and thin, with a narrow head and superior demeanor, he looked rather like a bishop that had been plucked from a chessboard.
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"A Gentleman in Moscow immerses us in another elegantly drawn era with the story of Count Alexander Rostov. When, in 1922, he is deemed an unrepentant aristocrat by a Bolshevik tribunal, the count 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 a doorway into a much larger world of emotional discovery..."--

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Book description
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.
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