From the Bookshelf of Book Riot's Read Harder Challenge…

A Gentleman in Moscow

Amor Towles

Finish date: January 25, 2017

Discussion: 2017 Read Harder Challenge

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2017 Read Harder Challenge

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What Members Thought

May 05, 2021 Roxy rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: buddy-reads

Life affirming. Full of heart. A guidebook on how to live. I know count The Count as one of my best literary friends, and this book as one of my favourite books ever.

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Aug 02, 2019 Kerry rated it liked it · review of another edition

I listened to this tale of Count Rostoff experiencing Moscow from the interior of the Hotel Metropole for over 3 decades! He experiences quite the gammut of Russian history and sea change from within this historic institution with humor, an excellent attitude, gentility and grace. He definitely is a glass half-full with a perfectly paired wine, chilled to the precise temperature.
I mean this character definitely revels cultivating an appreciation for the arts, enjoying the finer things in life a I listened to this tale of Count Rostoff experiencing Moscow from the interior of the Hotel Metropole for over 3 decades! He experiences quite the gammut of Russian history and sea change from within this historic institution with humor, an excellent attitude, gentility and grace. He definitely is a glass half-full with a perfectly paired wine, chilled to the precise temperature.
I mean this character definitely revels cultivating an appreciation for the arts, enjoying the finer things in life and prizing fine/high culture.

As a result, while I respected this character's ability to make the best of his circumstances and to survive while living under house arrest for decades in this elegant hotel, I found some of it a bit far fetched/un plausible if you will.

I did enjoy the book more once his curiosity is sparked and his adventures with the young 9 year old Nina shifts the eyes through which he sees the hotel. Then again when Sofia enters into the picture and changes how he himself lives in these surroundings Finally, I also enjoyed as we learn more about his crew (the triumvirate) (haughty much?) but they do have a good thing going! As a foodie I appreciated a lot of the food references and the shenanigans around the hotel. As someone who has spent some time in the former Soviet Union, I recognized a bit of a high culture snobbery throughout this book that I had mixed feelings about, especially since it seemed to gloss over some of the horrible atrocities happening just outside in a way that only a person in total isolation and complete denial could manage to build around themselves.
Overall, I had a tough time maintaining the belief that some of this could have really played out this way and not in a harsher manner. I've read too much about the brutality of part of the era covered in the book, I was not good at suspending my harsh views of the reality of this time to just float along on the flawlessly polite, impeccably cultured, Count Rostoff who maintains his positivity being cut down to a shadow of his former self over the course of the book. In the end, his spunk demonstrates some determination and ingenuity in the end. The reader was well suited to this book, but may have contributed to my finding the main character a bit stuff. There is a supporting cast of fascinating friends and colleagues in the hotel who really do help create a world there for the reader if you are willing to be carried up to the roof for some otherworldly honey by the most talented bees! ...more

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Dec 23, 2019 Julianne Dunn rated it it was amazing

Shelves: 2020-read-harder

The concept of "spinning a yarn" has always appealed to me as it's one of those idioms that's perfectly understandable and also very visual. As you spin yarn, you are trapped more and more. You can't get out. You don't really want to get out. You are ever more threaded into the yarn and are entranced. This book is exactly like that. A story told from The Count's 30th year until his 70s (maybe 60s), it is about his life of "exile" in the Metropol hotel and how, rather than let the circumstances s ...more

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