Rules of Civility in Reading with Style

Dec 31, 2011 Juniper rated it really liked it

Shelves: 2012-books, palate-cleansers, first-books, owned

Following review from The Telegraph by Elena Seymenliyska

It is 1937 and Katey Kontent (as in state of being) is a young woman living it up in Manhattan. By day she earns her rent typing depositions at Quiggin & Hale. By night she gets her kicks sneaking into the Capitol Theater or slipping into smoky jazz bars in Greenwich Village. Perched on stools with her room-mate Evelyn Ross, they can make a Martini last an hour – unless, that is, they manage to charm someone else into buying the drinks.

One Following review from The Telegraph by Elena Seymenliyska

It is 1937 and Katey Kontent (as in state of being) is a young woman living it up in Manhattan. By day she earns her rent typing depositions at Quiggin & Hale. By night she gets her kicks sneaking into the Capitol Theater or slipping into smoky jazz bars in Greenwich Village. Perched on stools with her room-mate Evelyn Ross, they can make a Martini last an hour – unless, that is, they manage to charm someone else into buying the drinks.

One snowy New Year’s Eve, that someone else is Theodore Grey – Tinker to his uptown friends. “Dibs,” says Eve as he walks in, his cashmere coat draped over one arm, his royal blue eyes surveying the crowd like he’s at the helm of a schooner. A round of gin and a bottle of champagne later, the newly fast friends make resolutions for each other. Be less shy, suggests Tinker to the girls, laughing. Get out of your ruts, says Eve, serious. Fortune is listening: before the first week of 1938 is through, the lives of the three of them are changed forever.

Rules of Civility by Amor Towles caused a stir last year on account of the sizeable advance paid by the British publisher for this first novel – reputedly £100,000, offered over what the editor called “a very appropriate midday Martini”.

Towles, a Boston-born, Manhattan-based financier, set himself the task of writing a novel in a year, with two weeks to draft and revise each of the book’s 26 chapters.

The exercise certainly pays dividends – the best feature of Rules of Civility is its fast pacing and irresistible momentum. The language is snappy, too, full of period idiom and witty one-liners. “Bust my bosoms,” exclaims a boarding house room-mate as she knocks Katey off her heels. “Come on, sweet stuff,” calls out a train conductor as Katey idles by the door. “Sweet your own stuff,” Katey parries back.

Katey herself is another of Towles’s bankers. A cross between Dorothy Parker and Holly Golightly, she is a priceless narrator, as well as a memorable character in her own right – the brains of a bluestocking with the legs of a flapper and the mores of Carrie Bradshaw. Her progress from the lowly typing pool of a legal firm to the glitzy offices of the magazine giant Condé Nast and from the low-rent Brooklyn of her birth to a Central Park apartment with a doorman is a classic American fairy tale.

Eve is also a classic, in the best-friend variety. A glamorous blonde from Indiana who wants to make it in the big smoke without the help of daddy’s funds, she is a perfect chalk-and-cheese foil to Katey, daughter of an impoverished Russian émigré. And Tinker is yet another classic too, a character straight out of F. Scott Fitzgerald, as are most of Towles’s men. (The ones that aren’t, such as Tinker’s brother Hank, an arrogant and angry artist, owe their debt to Hemingway instead.)

That familiarity is part of the novel’s pleasure: it is so readable precisely because it is so unchallenging. In fact, Rules of Civility is like a collage of the 20th century’s greatest cultural hits: a glimpse of Edith Wharton here, a wink towards Hitchcock there, a blast of Cole Porter there. It all feels a bit second-hand, a bit pastiche. For all its sparkle, why have costume jewellery when you’ve paid for diamonds?

*************************

That review about captures how I felt about Towles novel. It was a great escapist read. I had fun and was entertained throughout. Of particular enjoyment - picking out all of the literary references and enjoying Katey's Bookishness. ...more

Like · see review

Feb 15, 2020 Maia rated it really liked it

Shelves: 3-5, zeta, 2020

I never rate trashy novels 4, but this was perfect. Not just slick good writing, but some truths inside there too. A must-read if you're a teenager. Slightly too endebted to another book, but perfect of it's kind - resembles the 'new yorker' the protagonist works for. ...more

Like · see review