From the Bookshelf of EVERYONE Has Read This but Me - The Catch-Up Book Club…

A Gentleman in Moscow

Amor Towles

Start date: October 1, 2022

Finish date: October 31, 2022

Discussion: MODERN / POPULAR READS

Why we're reading this: October 2022 - Bookshelf Catch-Up Selection
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Group pick for Aug '19 - Modern Classics/Popular

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Jan 07, 2020 Rianto Dermawan rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction

"As you may know, I was invited to the Kremlin for a tête-à-tête. There, several duly goateed officers of the current regime determined that for the crime of being born an aristocrat, I should be sentenced to spend the rest of my days . . . in this hotel.”

Firstly about the writer, Amos Towles, born in 1964, raised in Boston, worked in New York for 20 years as investment professional, published a book 'A Gentleman in Moscow' in 2011, historic fiction novel about event in Bolsheviks Revolutio "As you may know, I was invited to the Kremlin for a tête-à-tête. There, several duly goateed officers of the current regime determined that for the crime of being born an aristocrat, I should be sentenced to spend the rest of my days . . . in this hotel.”

Firstly about the writer, Amos Towles, born in 1964, raised in Boston, worked in New York for 20 years as investment professional, published a book 'A Gentleman in Moscow' in 2011, historic fiction novel about event in Bolsheviks Revolution 1917-1923. He is arduous and audacious to create and write such a book, as if a protagonist aristocrat whose nobility being seized by leftist socialist who then become communist, the party who sentenced the Count to a life confinement.
But then reading the page of transcript of inquiry and verdict of COMMITTEE OF THE PEOPLE’S COMMISSARIAT FOR INTERNAL AFFAIRS dated 21 June 1922 only become delusion which deceive me for expecting thrilling and suspense story when we continue reading the following pages afterward.

To contemplate his confinement inside luxury hotel, the Count with his new acquaintance, a nine year old girl, do some excursion to explore every corner of the grandeur architecture. While reliving his childhood life with his bourgeois family, he felt beyond walls and doors, the building has grow encompass all Russia. It was a superficial thought that lightened his remaining days as a convict. This is a gentleman's denial, "...men in such situations will carve their 365 notches into a piece of wood or scratch it into their cell walls. Why do they try to mark time? "

Some years later, the girl become a lady who left the Count but return to ask help to guard her daughter. And again the Count play and teach this little girl inside the hotel and the restaurant. The hotel's restaurants with good chef serving food and wine, with some prominent staff who bowed respectfully to take orders from royal guest. The years passed, the coming guests were different, the behavior changed, people need same attention, the same table size, the same food and wine, 'collectivization'. The gentleman has gradually changed to be called a 'comrade'. There is no dramatic issue that drags emotional intensity. There is no harsh, wild, cruel communist who punish the arrogant bourgeoisie.

Where else in all Europe could one shout a single word to hail any of one's countrymen, by the male or female, young or old, friend or foe. "Comrade !" someone called.

I think the very interesting and gave a plus to read is the conversation between Count with Anna Urbanova, an artist or former artist, who are both aging with their years of relationship. While lying in the bedroom of a hotel talking about the Former, the term for Stalin's supreme leader who died and Khrushchev who was chosen to be the successor. Is the Former's political ideology going to be continued by the Latter. And the theory of Formers and Latter continues into music and food. And about the reason how port city in the world become spring as the Latter rather than city of the Former as geographically in the middle of continent far away from coast line .

But Moscow is not a port, my love. At the center of all that is Russia—of its culture, its psychology, and perhaps, its destiny—stands the Kremlin, a walled fortress a thousand years old and four hundred miles from sea. Physically speaking, its walls are no longer high enough to fend off attack; and yet, they still cast a shadow across the entire country.” ...more

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