A Gentleman In Moscow

[Sara Grace]

Having trouble connecting with this book to keep going. I'm about 75 pages in. What interested those that have read it? Was it more about the elegance of the writing?

[Lily]

Sara Grace wrote: "Having trouble connecting with this book to keep going. I'm about 75 pages in. What interested those that have read it? Was it more about the elegance of the writing?"

For me it was about the possibility of living a life of grace and kindness even if placed under impossible, but fortunate, conditions while living in the midst of a cruel, incomprehensibly inhuman political regime. As Ron Charles, reviewer at the Washington Post wrote, “'A Gentleman in Moscow' offers a chance to sink back into a lost attitude of aristocracy — equal parts urbane and humane — just what we might expect from the author of that 2011 bestseller 'Rules of Civility.' But if Towles’s story is an escape we crave, it is also, ironically, a story of imprisonment. "

https://www.washingtonpost.com/entert...

Ron also wrote:

"The novel’s trickier challenge is the potential for glibness. There could easily have been something unseemly about a light comedy that takes place against the background of two world wars and the fathomless horrors of Stalinism — 'Hogan’s Heroes' with room service. Towles’s solution is wry understatement that extends to a series of historical footnotes. 'Let us concede,' he says at the start of one chapter, 'that the early thirties in Russia were unkind.' It’s an approach that allows him to pursue his warmhearted story while acknowledging, with Russian irony, the ocean of suffering taking place all around it. "

[Sara Grace]

Questions: were there a lot of things not explained in the book or did I miss things while listening to the audiobook? What happened to Nina and her husband (actually saw the responses above when I switched to the desktop site, argh spoiler tags and being on a phone!)? Before I realized, the Count was talking about Sofia as 13 and then 18 but I thought he was only to have her a month at most? Where is she staying (Sofia) this whole time?? His tiny room?? Is she going to school?

[Malaraa]

Yeah, no-one came back for her, so he just kept taking care of her. I remember something about her leaving the hotel to go to school, I think there's even a scene where she gets hurt at school and he sneaks out to go see her? Not sure if I'm remembering that part correctly. When he realized she was going to be there long enough to need her own bed, he made basically a trundle bed to hide under the main bed when not in use, in case anyone not in the know came in.