A Gentleman in Moscow
discussion
Ending of book
message 51:
by
Rosanne
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rated it 4 stars
Sep 15, 2017 06:31AM
Tutti: Of course. However, Count Rostov had developed friendships with people in high places over the years. Records could be conveniently lost, forgotten, or altered, and officials could have been influenced to work on his behalf. Anyway it was just a thought that I had to work out an alternate ending. I feel that the Count deserved a much more refined and discerning denouement, something exceptional, like the man he is. Brandishing guns, abducting Bishop, making his way to Nizhny Novgorod bearded and dirty just doesn't seem a proper end to this charming man who for decades has maintained his elegance living in the belfry of the Metropol.
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Rosanne wrote: "Tutti: Of course. However, Count Rostov had developed friendships with people in high places over the years. Records could be conveniently lost, forgotten, or altered, and officials could have been..."Yeah well, I was talking about the real Soviet Union, not the fantasy world of the novel. It's a bit difficult to comment when the story is not based on reality.
Fiction is fun :))
Rosanne wrote: "Fiction is fun :))"Maybe some day someone will write a fun, fictional novel about the Holocaust, as well, or maybe about slavery...
Loved the comments and particularly enjoyed yours Valerie. The book is brilliant!!!
Edith wrote: "Valerie wrote: "I just finished reading this book for the first time and I loved it! I don't know if anyone is even reading this board anymore, but I am dying to discuss the book with someone and a..."Edith wrote: "Valerie wrote: "I just finished reading this book for the first time and I loved it! I don't know if anyone is even reading this board anymore, but I am dying to discuss the book with someone and a..."
That's a beautiful point Edith and I am sure you are right. But other Russian stories don't see it this way. I wonder if the ideals you express are more honestly from our democratic view point...
Marcia wrote: "Many thanks to Valerie for your thoughtful analysis of this book. I'm facilitating discussion of "A Gentleman . . . " this week and feel fortunate to have your input as a guide."Thanks Marcia! You made my day!
Teresa wrote: "Valerie, you say that Rostov is "not a gentleman. He's inconsiderate, selfish, rude, lazy (half past nine?), gluttonous, nosy and over and over we get implications that the guy is really a lech wit..."Agreed Theresa. But the term has a double meaning certainly. And besides, who admits they have bad behavior? Certainly one interpretation of this wonderful story is that Rostov starts his journey with your definition and ends with mine.😀
To Roseanne ... I finally finished this book at 6am. The ending has bothered me all day ... I completely agree with you on everything! What is your favorite book? I need a new one!
Laurie: Nice to hear that you agree that the ending of A Gentleman in Moscow was disappointing. I’m still upset about the ending after finishing the book several weeks ago. I keep thinking, “My Count Rostov would not act that way.” We are reading the book in our book club in December. It will be interesting to get all the members’ opinions about the ending. I love so many authors. Have you read: Beneath a Scarlet Sky (Mark Sullivan); The Glass Castle (Jeanette Walls); Ordinary Grace (William Kent Krueger); All the Light We Cannot See or The Shell Collector (Anthony Doerr); Bel Canto or Truth and Beauty (Ann Patchett); The Book Thief (Marcus Zusak); Crossing to Safety (Wallace Stegner); The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Society (Annie Barrows). These are some favorite books of mine.
Wow, Roseanne! Thank you so much! Count Rostov would definitely not have ended it this way. I have read almost half of your suggestions and will look into the others. I think it helps when someone shares your opinion! It will be interesting to hear what your book club thought of the book!
Pete wrote: "Penny wrote: "After completing this entire book which is very lengthy, I was unclear about the ending. Was the lady the count met in the kitchen of the Inn the Inn his lover Anna, his friend the po..."Pete wrote: "Penny wrote: "After completing this entire book which is very lengthy, I was unclear about the ending. Was the lady the count met in the kitchen of the Inn the Inn his lover Anna, his friend the po..."
In the first sexual encounter between Rostov and Anna at the Metropol so many years earlier, Anna is described as "willowy". This description is repeated in the "the willowy woman" waiting in the tavern in the final scene of the book. I believe that Towles has Rostov meeting his love, Anna, in the tavern.
Penny wrote: "After completing this entire book which is very lengthy, I was unclear about the ending. Was the lady the count met in the kitchen of the Inn the Inn his lover Anna, his friend the poet's lover, or..."I agree.
The poem saved Rostov's life because it was pro-revolution. In the book, Rostov says he would have been shot like the other aristocrats but for the poem.Rostov did not betray his country by sending Sophia out. She would have been a target once he disappeared.
Valerie wrote: "Teresa wrote: "Valerie, you say that Rostov is "not a gentleman. He's inconsiderate, selfish, rude, lazy (half past nine?), gluttonous, nosy and over and over we get implications that the guy is re..."Ohhh, nice!!!
Ginger wrote: "He stole the Finnish passport and then ditched it in Helsinki, to make the authorities believe he had escaped to the west through Finland."He wouldn't have been allowed to enter Finland, he would have been arrested at the border and returned. And Soviets would have known that.
Ginger wrote: "No one is every exonerated in Soviet Russia;"Plenty of people were rehabilitated after Stalin died. Also it's the Soviet Union, Russia was only one part of it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rehabil...
Leslie wrote: "But Why would the Court steal a Scandinavian passport if he planned to stay in Russia? Did I miss something or do I just interpret it differently?"He stole the Scandinavian passport and had his friend Viktor dump his clothes at a train station very close to the border to Finland, prompting the authorities to believe that he slipped through their fingers by making it across the border. It's perfect, really, as it means he'll get to live a quiet life without an ongoing search for him, allowing him to either stay in Russia or possibly expatriate in the future.
A lovely, lovely book by the way.
Karsten wrote: "He stole the Scandinavian passport and had his friend Viktor dump his clothes at a train station very close to the border to Finland, prompting the authorities to believe that he slipped through their fingers by making it across the border."It doesn't matter whether or not he had a foreign passport, it wouldn't have helped him to cross the border. Not to mention that one needed a "national" passport to travel in the country.
Fidele wrote: "Another possibility....the women was his sister. His sister's reported death may have only been a cover up to protect her life. Would he have given up his daughter to live with Anna? Could his sist..."I thought it could have been his sister also.
Leslie wrote: "Anna was the woman, that was clear. But Why would the Court steal a Scandinavian passport if he planned to stay in Russia? Did I miss something or do I just interpret it differently? I know he want..."I totally agree Leslie. I feel the same way!
He took the passport to make the Russian authorites think he left the country.Otherwise they may have thought he would go back to his home.
Cathy wrote: "He took the passport to make the Russian authorites think he left the country.Otherwise they may have thought he would go back to his home."That could only have worked if the authorities were so stupid that they didn't know how their own system worked (and the border control in general).
(And Scandinavia isn't a country, it's a region comprised of Sweden, Norway and Denmark. I doubt there were many passports from those countries laying around, either.)
But if you remember he was a friend of the chief inspector, who loved the movie Casablanca. His comment on "round up the usual suspects"I think indicated they weren't really going to spend a lot of time searching for Roscov. In a way Count Roscov was taking the heat off his inspector friend.
Cathy wrote: "But if you remember he was a friend of the chief inspector, who loved the movie Casablanca. His comment on "round up the usual suspects"I think indicated they weren't really going to spend a lot of..."Well if you forget the reality in the USSR and follow the fantasy land of the book then that might work, but it still doesn't explain why he would be allowed to some other country.
It is in the end just a story.
This isn't Dickens. And it's not Tolstoy. Stop looking for realism in one part of the book but accepting absurdity in the rest. If we're going to split hairs about what is and is not possible under a Soviet Regime, you can just toss the whole book in the garbage, 'cause let's face it, ain't nobody getting the five-star hotel sentence under Stalin! The whole book is an illusion, a safe way for us Westerners to watch the horrors of Stalinist regime by peeking through the front window of a hotel lobby, and not over the Iron Curtain. At one wonderful moment Towles even makes fun of the whole thing himself, when, although the book is written in third person, all of the sudden the narrator (POV Rostov of course) asks "And what's with all the ellipses??" If that's not breaking the fourth wall I don't know what is. . . a narrator shouldn't be commenting on the punctuation! Stop trying to make it all fit in mathematically. It's a beautiful story to make a point about inner freedom. It's art. It doesn't conform to reality. . .The important thing about the ending is that Towles' character achieved his freedom. And he did, in every way necessary. . .man I loved this book. . .
It claims to be historical fiction, not fantasy, so it should follow some basic rules of the real world, at least if it expects to make any sense. In fact the author seems to rely on the fact that his readers are just as ignorant about the USSR as he is. But it's good that Westerners can enjoy the book without having to remember all those millions who died under Stalin. I guess you would also like a book about a Jew in Berlin during WWII, enjoying life in some nice place, having discussions with Hitler and the rest. I am sure no one would mind a book like that.
Forgive my misunderstanding. I assumed your only problem with this book was the simplistic approach to his "escape" for the ending. But it seems you are angry with the entire scenario of the plot and in fact with writers at large who take artistic liberties within the confines of history. And for that you are entitled to your opinion, but on behalf of my generation and of artists everywhere, I lay my arguments before you. Take or leave them. I loved this book so much, that I have three loads of laundry I should be folding, but I'm going to be a lech and sit here and write about A Gentleman in Moscow instead! The "basic rules of the real world" have been met in this novel. Your judgement of Towles is absurdly harsh. He does not even once try to paint a "nice little scene." All the characters in the book, except for Rostov, are suffering terribly. Most are dead by the end of the book. The artistic licence of fiction allows Towles to maintain the simple human dignity of them all within the confines of the hotel, so that they (the Russian people) are not just black and white numbers to us. The "safe bubble" that Towles creates in the hotel, allows Westerners in particular to witness the terrible human crimes, because the Russian lives lost won't mean anything to us if they are just numbers.
Is Rostov, in your words, "enjoying life in some nice place?" Not in the book I read. He'd been stripped of everything that is valuable to him, and gets all the way to the point of suicide. He takes on a job that is demeaning to him, he can't marry the woman he loves, he can't even go see his daughter play a concert, heck he can't even stand up straight in his rooms!. . .
A Gentleman in Moscow is nothing like a "book about a Jew in Berlin, enjoying life in some nice place, having discussions with Hitler." Nowhere in this book does anyone sit down and have a nice "chat" with Stalin. Rostov is forced, to save his own life to sit down with the a Communist leader, but it's very clear that if he says no he will be sent to the same camp as all the rest. Do they become friends? Yes. I seem to remember a play called Playing for Time in which even the female concentration camp prisoners are not insensitive to the humanity of their captors. Friendship happens in the strangest of places. Perhaps you would prefer if Rostov refused and was executed there and then? That would have been more realistic? . . . I don't think so. I think most people were trying to save their necks however they could. . .
Nevertheless, by allowing the two to become friends, Towles demonstrates the humanity of the Soviet aggressors. They are after all, just people. Lost people. But people. . . it's a very hopeful view for those of us who stand almost a century out from the Holocaust and wonder "How could they do that?" But for the Grace of God, there go I. . . In our generation of so many racial and religious prejudices it is daily difficult not to judge others based on their race or belief system, but we all must try to find the common bonds that link us. Rostov's friendship with "the enemy" is a beautiful demonstration of that human dignity that we all must connect with each other. . .man I loved this book. . .
If you read my earlier post, I actually compared the theme of this novel to the very realistic book of NON-Fiction Man's Search for Meaning. Written by Victor Frankle about his humanity surviving in a Nazi camp. And no - I wouldn't mind, honestly, if someone could write a masterpiece that encapsulated some sense of human dignity somewhere hidden within the confines of Nazi territory, if it gave me a more intimate viewpoint of the tragedy unfolding outside the doors. But that's me. I'd rather care about characters as more than just suffering and murdered bodies. I'd rather be intimate with people than numbers.
I thought the movie "Life is Beautiful" did that pretty well, though in that case he didn't escape death. Perhaps it is the happy ending that you resent? No one should write a story with a happy ending in Soviet Russia? Perhaps. I think all of Russian literature, ballet, opera and poetry would probably agree with you!! But this was written by an American. . .
So an American. . . the REALITY of this discussion, that I think you will agree with, is that we Westerners of our generation are terribly SPOILED. We simply aren't going to read Survival in Aushiwitz anymore. I'm sorry to say that, it is very sad, but I believe it is true. And because the Iron Curtain stood so long, and the Communists were so effective in keeping truths from leaking West, the true story of Russia's suffering in the 20th century may never be heard by the masses. I am deeply sorry to say that. The REALITY is that if we are going to pass on the horrors of the last generation to this lazy self-absorbed and entitled generation (meaning me), we're going to have to build a bubble.
Towles did this brilliantly. One can only hope that the next generation will read it and ask themselves the question "HEY WHAT HAPPENED TO NINA??" And so on. . .
I will give you one point though. I am ignorant of the exact definition of "historical fiction." If this label is, as you seem to feel it should be, one that denotes historical REALISM, than this novel is indeed mis-labeled. It shoudl indeed not be considered alongside such historical works as 1776 or even Taylor Caldwell. . . though one could argue there too. . .But let us not throw out the Van Gogh's in our effort to properly label things. A Gentleman in Moscow is a masterpiece of words, ideally structured to it's generation's needs.
Now granted. I admit, I am an artist. So I am biased in defense of art. To me, you sound like someone complaining about how one can't clearly see the objects in a Picasso. Picasso was painting for his generation and Towles is writing for ours. . . And ours might not get the truth any other way (I mean without the fictitious bubble). And if you don't agree with my assessment of the generation of entitlement, or don't understand what I'm talking about, you can find a great example of our modern day attitude in A Gentleman in Moscow. The character's name is Count Rostov. . .
What a wonderful mind you have, Valerie. it was a pleasure to read your responses, both to this lovely book and to the other comments. Thank you.
Valerie wrote: "artistic liberties within the confines of history"No, he changed the history.
He takes on a job that is demeaning to him, he can't marry the woman he loves, he can't even go see his daughter play a concert, heck he can't even stand up straight in his rooms!
Oh, how horrible! :D Are you actually serious? Yes, I would call that enjoying life, compared to what really happened to people like him. It's a good thing that you care about the characters, as you obviously don't care about the real victims. "Human dignity", give me a break... Read a real account by a Gulag survivor or what it was like to be cramped in a prison cell with dozens of other people, with no room to sleep, no proper food causing malnourishment and/or diarrhea, no possibility to take care of one's hygiene... There are plenty available and have been for decades, unless one wants to remain willfully ignorant. And no, there were really no happy endings, because the authors were relatively empathetic people who didn't trivialize the suffering of the other people to please "sensitive Westerners", even if they themselves somehow got out. They knew that many others didn't.
But I guess can't help it if Americans and other Westerners want to remain willfully ignorant and rather read fairytales about the life in an imaginary Soviet Union. It's not like the victims and their suffering deserve to be remembered correctly. We lost tens of thousands of people to those camps (and if our military hadn't succeeded against all odds against the US backed Red Army, my grandparents would have been sent there, too), so we know there wasn't much humanity among the "Soviet aggressors". Besides, many of the guards were actual criminals, murderers and rapists, so their conscience didn't bother them. But you can try to find a common bond with the person raping you or the one who just killed your baby, just don't expect others to do that.
I have no right to discuss these things with you. Please accept my apologies for any insensitivity. I loved this book very much and it touched me very deeply so I speak with passion. I have read actual accounts myself, but know that most of my generation has not. Still none of that entitles me to speak to someone who has suffered so directly as you in such a manner. I am so very very sorry.
Yeah, it would be nice if even the American authors would respect the history of other countries and not falsify it to suit their fantasy story (Towles is not the only one who does this). There was a reason why a Finnish passport would not helped him to Finland and the USSR officials knew this. It was because Finland would have returned all Russian defectors in hope that there was a chance to get Finnish POWs back home, apparently the last one returned in 1959, 15 years after the war. Some had lost half their weight and had to be fed very carefully so they wouldn't die after getting real food because they had starved for years. Finland wouldn't have risked this to help some Russian. (At least the author didn't have him escaping the USSR during the war, like one other author. Because enemy alians are always welcome to a country at war, NOT! That one was also called "historical fiction".)One of the survivors wrote about an old Russian prince he had befriended with, a friend of the Tolstoy family who had also known the Royal family and the future Marshal Mannerheim. His sole possession when he died on some camp was a wooden spoon the author had carved him so he could eat. That's what happened to the nobility if they didn't leave the country, and if someone was let go after their sentence, they were usually internally exiled and not allowed to go to a certain number of bigger towns, and certainly not to stay in Moscow. A person didn't actually had to do anything to get shot or imprisoned, either, belonging to some targeted group, either ethnically or otherwise, was enough, and working in the Soviet government didn't save people or their family members from persecution, almost the opposite.
Tytti wrote: "Yeah, it would be nice if even the American authors would respect the history of other countries and not falsify it to suit their fantasy story (Towles is not the only one who does this). There was..."Tytti, I think you might have misunderstood the Count's plan. He never had any intention of leaving Russia, his only goal was to make it look as if he was trying to escape through Finland so his friend Osip would focus the authorities' "search effort" in that direction.
Defecting through Finland would have been insanely difficult. In fact, only about a dozen people are known to have made it! He couldn't just ride the train out of Russia, obviously. That's why he made it look as if he got off the train and would try to escape on foot. The security measures at the border were super intense. There's no way some 60-year-old dude could have made it. Osip, understanding his friend's intention, would have purposefully gone along with it though, as a distraction, while the Count traveled the 400+ kilometers in the opposite direction to Nizhny Novgorod.
So how does the Count set the Soviets off on the wrong track? He needs to steal a Finnish/Scandinavian/Nordic passport from one of the guests so they would report it missing (a Nordic passport would not have helped the Count get out of Russia, but it would have helped him travel from Finland to his actual destination in Paris). That plus the clues he has Viktor Stepanovich leave behind would be enough for the Soviets to put two and two together and assume he'd be headed towards the border where he'd eventually get caught or die on either the Russian or Finnish side.
By the way, this is probably why the book ends with the Count still in Russia. His chances of actually escaping were slim to none.
Tytti, you've focused a lot on how the Count was able to get a Finnish passport. Now, western tourism to the USSR was by no means a booming industry, but nevertheless, hundreds of thousands of westerners would visit every year. The most frequent tourists? The Finns of course! (see Galina Sergeeva's History and Traditions of Excursionism in Russia)
Additionally, A Gentleman in Moscow captured the actual, real-life Metropol hotel quite faithfully. Tourist, diplomats, journalists would stay at a fancy hotel in Moscow and then back home they'd report that Russia is doing great under communism. The hotel was essentially just another form of propaganda. And a great way to spy on foreigners too... This kind of stuff would cast a shadow of doubt on any news of atrocities and stuff that might have made its way to the west.
Would an aristocrat have been allowed to live at the Metropol under house arrest? This, admittedly, requires some suspension of disbelief and there are no historical examples of this having happened. However, I don't think it would have been completely impossible.
Some aristocrats were allowed to continue living in their mansions (which they would share with other people) and get menial jobs. In fact, the girls working at the bar in the Metropol were often of aristocratic/bourgeois descent.
The Count's situation was different though. A hugely popular poem supporting the revolution was attributed to him. He shot a fellow aristocrat and then fled the country. He voluntarily returned to Russia and did not openly support the Whites. After the revolution, he made no effort to escape with his family. He willingly abandoned his estate and was living in a hotel. This is the kind of stuff people would have heard about, punishing him wouldn't have looked good from a PR standpoint. Plus, he was clearly no threat to the Bolsheviks.
I'd argue that his life at the Metropol is somewhat believable.
Anyway, I'd love to discuss this further if anyone wants to!
And let me add this to my above comment in the interest of clarity. How could Osip be sure that the Count is not actually trying to escape Russia?Those of you who haven't seen Casablanca, beware of SPOILERS!
It's perhaps one of the most famous endings in cinema history so a lot of people have surely figured this one out. Rick (Humphrey Bogart) who, as Osip mentioned, wears a white jacket for most of the movie, much like a certain headwaiter at the Boyarsky, plans an escape out of Morocco for him and his love interest Ilsa (Ingrid Bergman). At the last minute, he sends Ilsa off to freedom (with the famous line "If you don't get in that plane you'll regret it. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but soon and for the rest of your life.") while he stays behind.
Osip confirms his understanding of the Count's plan with another famous line from the movie, "Round up the usual suspects!" The Count stays behind while Sofia is sent away to freedom.
The bittersweet ending seems to have rubbed some people the wrong way. What the book didn't really discuss is just how difficult defecting would have been. Many have died trying, many would rather have died trying than suffer through what happened after you got caught. So it's not like the Count even had a choice.
Pantalonsfancie wrote: "a Nordic passport would not have helped the Count get out of Russia, but it would have helped him travel from Finland to his actual destination in Paris"Nope, that would not have helped him at all. He would have been arrested. There is no way a passport would have been useful.
Pantalonsfancie wrote: "hundreds of thousands of westerners would visit every year. The most frequent tourists? The Finns of course"
Not before 1956.
Also what I have read about the Metropol, it didn't sound too fancy. There were mice etc.
Tytti wrote: "Pantalonsfancie wrote: "a Nordic passport would not have helped the Count get out of Russia, but it would have helped him travel from Finland to his actual destination in Paris"Nope, that would n..."
Again, the passport is a decoy. The Count had no intention of using it, he just needed the Soviets to think he would use it so Osip could derail any possible investigation.
Whether or not a passport would have been useless makes no difference. Just for the record though, any time you might want to sneak into a country a fake passport is probably going to be super useful.
Intourist, the state-owned tourist agency, was founded in 1929. There were definitely tourists at the Metropol and in Russia. And not just tourist but journalists and diplomats too, the book doesn't tell us why the Finnish couple was staying at the hotel and it doesn't really matter.
Mice or not, it's not like they had better options. Fun fact, it was actually a Finnish company that restored the hotel in the 1980s.
Pantalonsfancie wrote: "he just needed the Soviets to think he would use it so Osip could derail any possible investigation"In real life the Soviets would have known it was useless, that's the point, and a Russian couldn't portray himself as a Finn, a fake passport or not. There would be no reason to steal it.
And Finns didn't have a habit of going to the USSR as tourists during Stalin's era, especially after the war (and later most tourists went to Leningrad, anyway). The mass executions of Finns were very well known and also that getting out of the country might not be so easy. It would almost be like Jews going to Hitler's Germany for a holiday. Also the Finns who visited the country for some reason, politicians mainly, were probably all very well known to the Soviet government and most likely they had someone tailing them anyway. The author should have just kept the whole storyline out of the book. Why is it so difficult to respect the history (or people) of other countries if one uses them as settings and characters?
Tytti wrote: "Pantalonsfancie wrote: "he just needed the Soviets to think he would use it so Osip could derail any possible investigation"In real life the Soviets would have known it was useless, that's the po..."
Why couldn't the Count pass as Finnish? He might not be able to trick an actual Finn but he might be able to convince a, for example, French border guard who doesn't know anything about Finland. He addressed the couple at the restaurant in Finnish and they were impressed. So he's somewhat familiar with the language and just a super sophisticated dude in general...
In any case, it just doesn't matter! He stole a Finnish passport, maps of Finland, was seen boarding a train to Finland and left clues near the Finnish border. Why on Earth would the Soviets not assume that the plan is escaping through Finland?! As in literally the only land border that one could hope to cross to get into western Europe eventually?! Especially since it's his friend Osip directing the investigation!
Also, please stop trying to make people feel bad about liking this book. This is not a book about the complex relationship between Russia and Finland or anything like that. Personally, I can't even look out the window here in Romania without seeing the (mostly negative) effects of the Bolshevik Revolution. This doesn't mean I can't enjoy A Gentleman in Moscow.
If you insist on trying to make people feel bad at least get your facts straight! Here's a paper from a Finnish university about tourism in the Soviet Union:
http://users.utu.fi/aukosti/Soviet%20...
You'll find examples like Finnish writer Göran Schildt's three-week visit in 1953. Apparently, he received "royal treatment" and described '50s Russia as an "extremely exciting, strange and new place".
By no means is this the only information you'll find online about tourism in the Soviet Union. Amor Towles has surely researched this topic, you should too.
"Also, please stop trying to make people feel bad about liking this book. This is not a book about the complex relationship between Russia and Finland or anything like that. Personally, I can't even look out the window here in Romania without seeing the (mostly negative) effects of the Bolshevik Revolution. This doesn't mean I can't enjoy A Gentleman in Moscow."Thanks for writing this. I've been tortured for a couple weeks because I started feeling shallow and guilty for enjoying it so much. I started having conversations about the ethics of using real historical settings for light-hearted fiction. It's nice to here it from someone who is there. Phew. Is it okay to love this story again? I guess I need permission. . .
Valerie wrote: "Is it okay to love this story again? I guess I need permission. . . ..."Hard to tell if that was meant to be sarcastic or not, haha! Definitely no permission needed!
Although, I think some more historical context could have helped people understand why there's no typical happy ending in A Gentleman in Moscow.
I've noticed some confusion here about why the Count didn't just leave for Paris. The book failed to make it clear how close to impossible that would have been. It seemed to me, people were also confused about why Anna wouldn't just get recognized in rural Russia. Which is something that didn't even occur to me. The odds of some random 1950s farmers even having seen a movie, any movie, were insanely low.
In a way, as readers, we were just as sheltered from the realities of Soviet Russia as the Count was.
Loved your thoughts on the book!
I was a little disappointed to see that almost everyone in this thread seemed to be more concerned with details of the plot than with the general feeling this book imparts. I was struck with its easy erudition--nothing shoved down your throat, but wonderful facts and anecdotes constantly slipped in to add so much richness and depth. And of course, the Count as the constant example of how to live your life with meaning and grace.
Regarding the ending, I am thinking a sequel to this book. One because it seems unfinished and the author has left some hints: Like...Alexander's not getting reunited with his beloved daughter-or at least not being too far away from her, and also on p445
Richard Vanderwhile, after reading the Counts description, thought: "I could use a hundred men like Alexander Rostov". Is there a future in America or anywhere in Europe for Alexander Restov to now become a Gentleman spy of some sort?
My question is why do all the chapters titles all begin with the letter A? Could the next book be called Addendums to Alexander Rostov? PS really enjoyed message 36 by Valerie.
Valerie wrote: " It's nice to here it from someone who is there."Just FYI, Romania was never a part of the Soviet Union.
But there are also Russians who think that the picture this book gives about Stalin's USSR is very wrong (it doesn't seem to have been translated to Russian, either, probably for a reason).
Here is one review, she uses stronger language than I do:
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
Here's another:
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
If an author wants to write a fantasy novel, then they should make it clear to the reader and not use a real country and its history as the background. It's disrespectful to exploit them like this.
Pretty harsh! It's a novel, after all....
Sheila wrote: "Pretty harsh! It's a novel, after all...."But the history is real, and so were the victims. Would a novel like this be acceptable if the country was Nazi Germany and the Count was Jewish, having discussions with SS officers? The Boy in the Striped Pajamas is also a novel but for some reason many concentration camp survivors don't seem to like it.
You know I understand you point. Da Vinci Code was SO wrong for just that reason. I mean to write a fantasy book about a person who really existed. . . it was just wrong. . . And I admit it did make me very angry.
Marti wrote: "I thought the ending was beautiful and then the believability in modern society to live undetected made me a little sad. With Anna being so well known, I thought it would be impossible for them to ..."I disagree. Anna was almost as old as Alexander. She had been off the stage for a long time. With no makeup she would not have been recognized and certainly not by people so far removed from Moscow.
Fidele wrote: "Another possibility....the women was his sister. His sister's reported death may have only been a cover up to protect her life. Would he have given up his daughter to live with Anna? Could his sist..."His sister died when she was in her teens (17 or 18 I believe) while Alexander was out of the country so he would not be arrested for shooting the officer. At that point in time, Helena was not in any danger. Plus, Alexander’s lamenting of the guilt he felt for not being there when she took her last breath was very real.
Tytti wrote: "Leslie wrote: "But Why would the Court steal a Scandinavian passport if he planned to stay in Russia?"I'd like to know where he could have found a Scandinavian passport... There were not that man..."
Stalin was gone. The book specifically mentioned there being a fair number of Scandinavian visitors. He stole the passport to make it more believable that he had left Russia.
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In the Clutches of the Tcheka (other topics)A Gentleman in Moscow (other topics)
