Often I feel that the better a book is, the harder it is to write about, and Rules of Civility was fantastic; so bear with me.

The book is set in Manhattan in 1938, with a prologue and epilogue set in the 1960s. New York pervades the novel; the book is one long love song to the city, so much so that even I began to miss it a little. It echoes Edith Wharton's The Age of Innocence in this way, though there is more action, and Katey Kontent (pronounced kon-TENT, not KON-tent) is altogether a more admirable character than Newland Archer. Unlike him, she was not born to wealth and privilege, but enters this world through a chance meeting with Tinker Grey on New Year's Eve 1937.

The most striking aspect of this book was how the author brought the time and place to life in a detailed and wholly believable way, through setting and through character. Katey is the perfect narrator: she is sensible and adventurous, smart and fun, wise and articulate and observant. By the end of the novel I had a forest of bookmarks growing out of its pages.

Quotes:

...these primitive blondes set out from the cornfields looking like starlight with limbs. (14)

Like all the rest of the world's warring tribes, these two made their way to New York City and settled side by side. (31)

Which is just to say, be careful of choosing what you're proud of - because the world has every intention of using it against you. (37)

The skyline at night is so breathtaking and yet you could spend a whole life in Manhattan and never see it. Like a mouse in a maze. (73)

Old times, as my father used to say: If you're not careful, they'll gut you like a fish. (75)

That's the problem with being born in New York, the old newsman observed a little sadly. You've got no New York to run away to. (85)

"Slurring is the cursive of speech." (92)

...that self-imposed simplicity favored by New England Protestants who respect everything about wealth other than its uses. (152)

That's how quickly New York comes about - like a weather vane - or the head of a cobra. Time tells which. (161)

"It is more important to know when and where than whom or why." (167)

I could feel every beat of my heart - as if it was still keeping time, measuring the days like a metronome set somewhere on the finely graduated scale between impatience and serenity. (224)

...we walked shoulder to shoulder through the shade at an easy pace, conversing like friends from youth for whom every exchange is an extension of the last, regardless of the passage of time. (226)

all these times and places and occasions are now and here -Walden (230)

"We rarely know exactly where we stand in relation to someone else, and we never know where two confederates stand in relation to each other. But the sum of the angles of a triangle is always 180 degrees - isn't it." (256)

"Most people have more needs than wants. That's why they live the lives they do. But the world is run by those whose wants outstrip their needs." (259)

As a quick aside, let me observe that in moments of high emotion - whether they're triggered by anger or envy, humiliation or resentment - if the next thing you're going to say makes you feel better, then it's probably the wrong thing to say. This is one of the finer maxims that I've discovered in life. And you can have it, since it's been of no use to me. (260)

I suppose we don't rely on comparison enough to tell us whom it is that we are talking to. We give people the liberty of fashioning themselves in the moment - a span of time that is so much more manageable, stageable, controllable than is a lifetime. (262)

It was like the drummer had jimmied open the door and the others were stealing everything in the house. (273)

"What he's got they can't teach in schools. They can squash it, maybe, but they sure can't teach it."
"And what's that?"
"Wonder."
"Wonder!"
"That's right....Most of us shell our days like peanuts. One in a thousand can look at the world with amazement....Walking through an unsullied hour with an unsullied heart. (276)

I caught up with the others outside, giving a little prayer of thanks to no one in particular. Because when some incident sheds a favorable light on an old and absent friend, that's about as good a gift as chance intends to offer. (278)

Maybe the first winds of winter make everyone a little nostalgic for the days they're lucky to be rid of. (284)

He was basically a porcupine, but with a sentimental stripe and quills that made you think. (288)

After meeting someone by chance and throwing off a few sparks, can there be any substance to the feeling that you've known each other your whole lives? After those first few hours of conversation, can you really be sure that your connection is so uncommon that it belongs outside the bounds of time and convention? And if so, won't that someone have just as much capacity to upend as to perfect all your hours that follow? (296)

"If we only fell in love with people who were perfect for us, then there wouldn't be so much fuss about love in the first place." 297)

As we sat there, dusk was falling and the lights of the city were coming on one by one in ways that even Edison hadn't imagined. (300)

"When I think of the last few years, I've been hounded by regrets for what's already happened and fears for what might. By nostalgia for what I've lost and desire for what I don't have. All this wanting and not wanting. It's worn me out. (303)

For however inhospitable the wind, from this vantage point Manhattan was simply so improbable, so wonderful, so obviously full of promise - that you wanted to approach it for the rest of your life without ever quite arriving. (311)

"And at the same time, I know that right choices by definition are the means by which life crystallizes loss." (324)