A Gentleman In Moscow by Amor Towles

Our Book of the Month for July was A Gentleman In Moscow by Amor Towles about Count Alexander Rostov’s house arrest in the arresting(!) Metropol Hotel, Moscow.

A Gentleman In Moscow – The Blurb

“On 21 June 1922, Count Alexander Rostov – recipient of the Order of Saint Andrew, member of the Jockey Club, Master of the Hunt – is escorted out of the Kremlin, across Red Square and through the elegant revolving doors of the Hotel Metropol.

Deemed an unrepentant aristocrat by a Bolshevik tribunal, the Count has been sentenced to house arrest indefinitely. But instead of his usual suite, he must now live in an attic room while Russia undergoes decades of tumultuous upheaval.

Can a life without luxury be the richest of all?”

We talked about how it was different from other Russian books that we had read from this period. Yes there were horrors, but the Metropol Hotel offered an Oasis allowing the beauty of Russia to shine through. 

I got a bit geeky and talked about the structure of A Gentleman In Moscow.  The book is written in a 'diamond' style. From the moment the Count arrives at the Metropol his world expands outwards. From the attic to which he has never ventured into before, to Nina the little girl he has never spoken to. Towles constantly builds on this, providing more characters, rooms, experiences, until the midway point when the seemingly unconnected events start to merge together. The plot then rapidly decreases to the final sharp pointed ending of the Count’s escape.

In addition the book works on the doubling principal. We meet the Count one day after his arrest, then two days, then five, then ten and so on. This increases until the midway point where the halving principal is then applied. The period between chapters then reduces in time until the day of the Count’s escape.

I also asked what page people were up to when they realised that all the chapters began with an A. Not everyone had.

We all loved Rostov, the unflappable, food and drink loving Count and named him as one of our character's of the year. He provided the humour and carried the book effortlessly through 30 years of the Metropol’s revolving doors. We discussed Kenneth Branagh's proposed adaptation and can't wait.

We also loved the supporting cast, again one of the best all year? The Triumpvirate were terrific. Nina was a delight, as was Anna (especially with her clothes throwing). The Bishop was a perfect baddie and my only complaint was that Sophia was a little too sweet and nice. 

Zut is a game we now all want to play and the Boyarsky is a place we now all want to go. The Metropol is a real hotel people lets do this!

One of us who had previously read (and loved) Towles' other book, The Rules of Civility, didn't like the book at all having tried to read it a few years ago. Upon hearing us all wax lyrical they have decided to now going to give it another go. The rest of us gave it a resounding 9. One of our favourite books of the year.