From the Bookshelf of Ultimate Popsugar Reading Challenge…

A Gentleman in Moscow

Amor Towles

Start date: July 1, 2018

Finish date: July 31, 2020

Discussion: 2020 Monthly Reads

Why we're reading this: July 2020 group read for "a book set in an Olympic city"
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[close] July 2020 group read for "a book set in an Olympic city"

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2020 Monthly Reads

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* 2020 Monthly Group Reads - The Final List of Categories and Books
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What Members Thought

Apr 06, 2020 Maryam rated it it was amazing

Shelves: audiobook, fiction

I really enjoyed this book, such a heartwarming, well-written story.

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Jun 19, 2017 Rachel rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: historical-fiction, best-sellers, favorites

I want to hang out with the Gentleman in Moscow! He's so classy, caring, calm, funny... great taste in food and wine. I listened to this on audiobook and the narrator is terrific. The story is absolutely lovely! I can see how some may find it a bit slow as there is no big drama, but it is a wonderful story of life, and how one can still remain optimistic and a good person even when things are taken away. And in the end, many of the things that were discussed in detail earlier in the novel all co ...more

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Sep 30, 2016 KT rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Disclaimer: I received an advance copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Reading a book by Amor Towles is a lot like watching a pre-code Hollywood film. There's a charm and wit that infuses the story, whatever the situation for the characters. His previous novel, "The Rules of Civility" followed a working class girl as she navigated the upper echelons of NY society with only her wit and poise as her weapon and armor. "A Gentleman in Moscow" follows a man on the opposite trajectory. Disclaimer: I received an advance copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Reading a book by Amor Towles is a lot like watching a pre-code Hollywood film. There's a charm and wit that infuses the story, whatever the situation for the characters. His previous novel, "The Rules of Civility" followed a working class girl as she navigated the upper echelons of NY society with only her wit and poise as her weapon and armor. "A Gentleman in Moscow" follows a man on the opposite trajectory. Count Alexander Rostov goes from nobility to a simple hotel waiter in the aftermath of the Bolshevik revolution in Russia.

Tried and found guilty of being an aristocrat, Rostov is saved by a revolutionary poem he once wrote and instead of being executed or sent to Siberia, he is sentenced to life imprisonment in the hotel where he lives. Over the next several decades, we stay with him as people come and go from his life and people's fortunes rise and fall depending on which way the political wind is blowing.

What begins as a punishment ends up a refuge, as one by one, the people he knows fall prey to the whims of Stalinism. His oldest friend, Mishka, a scholar and revolutionary of the working class eventually observes, "Who would have imagined ... when you were sentenced to life in the Metropol all those years ago, that you had just become the luckiest man in all of Russia?"

What could be a dull book is made lively and colorful by the Count's unflappable charm. He keeps the reader going, and the friends he makes within the hotel, old and young, create a quirky family that stick together and steal small freedoms under an oppressive regime. Towles paces the book perfectly, as the years go by and we stay within the hotel, the stakes rise as the count acquires a daughter and develops a nemesis. And when you least expect it, Towles inserts a mystery and a caper that pull you in as the action suddenly speeds towards the end.

One does have to put aside any expectations of reading a true history of this period of Russian history. While the story takes place during one of the most horrific times to be a Russian citizen, the action takes place within a bubble where the worst of the horrors don't permeate. The story makes reference to what is going on outside the walls of the hotel, but for the most part, the reader is shielded from the brunt of it along with the count. What you are here for is the characters and the author's turn of phrase, rather than the harsh reality of a historical text. ...more

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