BOOK 8 - A GENTLEMAN IN MOSCOW (Amor Towles)

I can't remember why I chose this book to read - I have a feeling that I was intrigued by the blurb on the back cover and having a general interest in Russian history and literature felt it would be a good read.

And how right I was.

The opening of the book features Count Alexander Rostov who, having been determined by the Kremlin to be an aristocrat with no apologies for his background, sentences him to house arrest at the Metropole Hotel where he had been living in a suite. However, he finds that his house arrest is for him to be confined to an attic room on the 6th floor.

This novel explores in great depth and with an utmost care and diligence the relationships that the Count is able to forge whilst being confined to one building - a 9 year old girl he befriends (or is that the other way round?), the head chef and maitre d' of his favourite hotel restaurant, the seamstress of the hotel and more bizarrely an American attache, a famous beautiful Russian actress and a Kremlin officer.

Rostov is a man of erudition and wit, good manners and a belief that man should do what is right are the characteristics that drive both the story, the relationships in the novel and the writing.

I found the descriptive nature of the writing to be evocative of an earlier age, where courtesy mattered and when you are living your life in one building and the tumultuous events of Russia in the early 20th century are happening outside your window, then this is all that can exist.

Rostov loses all his luxuries with his confinement, but has he lost his zest for life. "For what matters in life is not whether we receive a round of applause; what matters is whether we have the courage to venture forth despite the uncertainty of acclaim" (Count Rostov)

This novel could so easily have become whimsical and although the thought that the revolutionary forces would have spared a man such as Rostov is not likely, the novel is full or richness and delight.

I did not expect the twist at the very end, but still gave a sigh of happiness that it had happened.

I loved this novel and will be sure to read it many times more as I feel that it is one of those in which new discoveries will be made with each additional reading.