A Gentleman in Moscow: A Novel

A delightful book. Every time you think it has reached a decent place to end, it continues to enchant and romance.

Halleluia! Apparently, very well-written books are still being published, books that stand out for their refined style, full of references to history and culture, both in the characters and in the settings… Ah, I can almost hear you say: “aristocratic, then”. And indeed, that is a very apt description. Especially since the main character is a sensitive Russian count, Alexander Rostov, born into a wealthy environment, well-educated, well-mannered, much-travelled, but unfortunately for him in a time and place that is not so well-disposed towards his class: Moscow after the Russian Revolution. At the beginning of the novel, in 1922, we see Rostov sentenced by a revolutionary council to a lifelong stay in the Hotel Metropole, a sentence that he will serve for several decades with much forbearance, perseverance and above all style. What helps is that the place of his house arrest is a microcosm in itself, with several restaurants, shops, a hairdresser, etc., all that a man of standing needs. And Rostov gets through it with a flourish and some cunning, thanks to the many encounters with intriguing personalities, including a bright 9-year-old young lady who dreams of becoming a princess. Indirectly, and actually only to a very limited extent, Towles also portrays the evolution of the Soviet Union under Stalin, and at crucial moments politics also seems to penetrate the Hotel Metropole, even to Rostov's advantage.
I really enjoyed this novel. Where on earth did Amor Towles suddenly come from? What a style, what beautiful references to other (mainly Russian) literary classics. Only, in the last quarter the story becomes a bit watered down, it becomes a bit too episodic for my taste, with quite a bit of sentiment, to end up in an escape story. But in the end the sympathy for Count Rostov remains: what a wonderful literary character!

I have heard many things about this book in the last few years, but finally decided to read it because it is one of this month's group reads in the 21st Century Literature group

My thoughts are decidedly conflicted. Towles packs in a lot of historical detail, and the atmosphere of the Metropol Hotel is captured brilliantly, but in the end there was too much that I simply couldn't find believable. If anything the book it reminded me of most was The Count of Monte Cristo - another sophisticated shaggy dog story. And although Towles alludes to many of the more horrific elements of the Stalin era, they feel almost incidental to an almost picaresque plot, which at least for me portrays a rather romantic vision of the aristocracy, perhaps one that owes too much to nineteenth century Russian novels

This was a very interesting book with a lot of history of Russia and Moscow. The characters are very well written, each with such different personalities. I especially liked Count Alexander Rostov who was a true gentleman who had to spend his life in a hotel. He goes through so much and some of it is funny, sad, adventureful and twisted. It was a good read, a little wordy, full of interesting facts. The ending takes you by surprise.

I absolutely loved this novel! Count Rostov, elegant, cultivated, charming, finds himself a Former Person under house arrest in the Metropol hotel. As he adapts to his circumstance we see the birth of a nation and its impacts on the hotel's micro-world as characters sweep in and out of the rotating doors. A consummate diplomat, Rostov nonetheless triumphs through adversity thanks to his wits, generosity and acuity. Fundamentally, it's the novel optimism that I enjoyed so much. Well-written with a wonderful cast of characters, this novel is brilliant.

An excellent semi-historical fiction novel. The writing is excellent. I was enthralled with all of the characters, the setting and the plot. The author cleverly weaves in bits of real-world history to make this feel authentic. There's just something great about how the main character goes about his life and how much he is influenced by the other people during his exile in the hotel.

If you give this book the time it deserves, the reading experience is an erudite delight. Amor Towles' attention to detail perfectly matches Count Alexander Rostov's precision in adapting to house arrest at the Metropol grand hotel, located across the street from the Kremlin, during the topsy-turvy years of Russian history from the 1920s to the 1950s. Getting to know the man at the center of the story is a leisurely paced venture, replete with lush, descriptive detail. The Metropol is a microcosm of Moscow that, despite the changing times, retains its grandeur and character -- due, in no small part, to the presence and actions of its longest resident. Laced with subtle humor and relationships that develop richly by means of slight moments and gentle conversations as much as by major historical events, this character-driven novel is absolutely captivating from start to finish.

I started digging into Russian history when they started bombing the Ukraine. I eased in with A Gentleman in Moscow and then moved to a history on the Romanovs. THIS book was much easier to get through than the history.

The overnight change the Count faced, it feels like we're on the precipice of the same kind of overnight change and its scary. However, I hope I can handle change with as much grace and humor as the Count.

We've all heard someone say "I may not know much about art, but I know what I like." That's how I feel on finishing this book. It's essentially the story of an aristocrat who has been sentenced to a lifetime of house arrest in a Moscow hotel by the new Bolshevik government. This may not sound like the makings of a fast-paced thriller, and it isn't. What it is is a beautifully crafted story that gives readers an inside view of the Soviet Union's formative years, as seen by the Muscavites who live in, work in, or visit the Hotel Metropol. Towles is a master of character development, and I quickly found myself loving and/or occasionally hating every character in his book.
Bottom line: This is a book best read by the light of a cozy fire. I highly recommend it.

So beautifully written, such a rich and engaging story, that I didn't want it to end. Amor Towles is both gifted, and a gift.

Excellent. Couldn’t put it down

Beautifully read on the audio version.

Rating: 2.5 out of 5
1 point because it wasn't bad
1 point because the sentences were lovely
1/2 point because it made me tear up twice (admittedly this isn't a great distinction)

Elegantly written an skillful use of the English Language, a truly great novel.

When opening “A Gentleman in Moscow” (2016) by Amor Towles for the first time, one is likely to be thinking, "How can a novel about a man under house arrest in a Moscow hotel for decades possibility fill 462 pages? Can it really be as interesting as people say it is?"

It turns out the novel is so interesting a reader might wish it were even longer than it is. Covering so many years, the novel is necessarily episodic, and some episodes are more interesting than others. Yet there is a continuing story here with continuing characters, and almost everything comes together in the dramatic climax.

Count Alexander Rostov could have been shot for the crime of being an aristocrat after the Russian Revolution. Instead he is moved into a small room in the Metropol Hotel in Moscow and forbidden to leave the hotel for the rest of his life.

Like Towles's earlier book, “Rules of Civility,” this is a novel of manners. Being a true gentleman, the count accepts his fate with grace and style. He makes the most of a bad situation and enjoys a full life, eventually becoming the head waiter at the hotel's fine restaurant, where Communist Party leaders often come to dine in a style they deny their countrymen.

Three female characters play significant roles in the count's life. One is Nina, a precocious nine-year-old girl when he first meets her. She also lives in the hotel and manages to turn him into a playmate. She teaches him the secrets of the hotel.

Anna is a beautiful actress who becomes his temporary lover whenever she stays at the Metropol.

The third is Sofia, Nina's tiny daughter left in the count's care while Nina goes off to Sibera in search of her imprisoned husband. She expects to be back in a matter of days, but she never returns, and he raises Sofia in his small room until she becomes a beautiful young woman and a gifted pianist.

If there was ever a "stranger comes to town" novel, it is this one. Yet in time it also becomes a "hero takes a journey" novel, and that journey alone is worth the price of owning this wonderful novel.

Just made my top ten. TOP. TEN.

Brilliant, warm, engaging, moving, satisfying.

It is the business of the times to change, Mr. Halecki. And it is the business of gentlemen to change with them."

A charming novel. Amor Towles appears to belong to the genre I call faux-literature: stories with a bit of depth, historical or otherwise, and a writing style that is painted over with panache if not quite artistry. (It was no surprise to see that Towles has been associated with the novels of Scott Fitzgerald; he is the supreme purveyor of faux-literature.) There's nothing wrong with the genre at all - it may even be helpful in bringing avid readers to the pure stuff - but for someone like myself, I often find it, like Fitzgerald, grating. Perhaps it's the feeling a genuine gastronome would have on seeing my idea of "high-class" food: serving a reheated supermarket crêpe with a dusting of icing sugar, or upping the glamour of some potato chips by adding store-bought pâté. It's delightful and invigorating, but not quite the same. One begins to feel like it's a false promise for those who have never experienced haute cuisine, and a bald compromise for those who have... even if it makes me personally rather satisfied.

All of which is a harsh way of saying that - contrary to my own expectations - I adored this book. Positively revelled in it. Taking place over three decades, and set almost exclusively in one hotel in Moscow's theatre district, Towles' novel fuses character development with lush prose, a reasonably insightful long-game view of the rise of the Soviet Union, and - most importantly - a well-realised spirit of place. We spend so much time in the Metropol, that Towles has set himself an impressive task to continue to make the space surprising and enchanting, and he succeeds almost all the time.

If I'm honest, the author's attempts to be "literary" frustrated me as often as they appealed. Fair enough, he's writing a novel that is part-folk tale or allegory; this can forgive some of the flights of fancy. Perhaps I should accept that the moments that would be traditional narrative climaxes are often underserved. Perhaps I can even forgive the slightly twee footnotes, and the comic moments of Russians attempting to understand mid-20th century American culture. The novel is flirting with modernism without giving up its popular fiction niche, which is a tango that has tangled up greater writers than he. I suppose I could even invert my statement: for every moment that frustrated me, there was one that appealed. I find it very hard to dislike a writer who conjures up a scene in which actors start improvising when the lights go out during a performance of The Seagull, doing so in perfect Chekhov-ese (and transcribed on the page in script format). I genuinely bumped the book up a star because of that scene.

Will you like this book? Very probably. It appears everyone does. (My library has reduced the borrowing period on this book because of high demand!) The mingling of history and comedy with unashamedly art deco prose is an intoxicating combination for nostalgics, romantics, and tragics, every one. And even for those of us who aren't popular readers, it's a treat.

Really enjoyed it. Wonderful construction, turns of phrase and overall message of decency.

Delightful, perfection.

Loved it! This is a slow story, but quite engaging. Lots of intrigue.

A wonderful, rich, and satisfying book, beautifully and evocatively written. The best I’ve read in a long time. The dark threads of the political events following the Russian revolution woven through the plot gently and balanced perfectly by the strength of spirit, wisdom, humour, and compassion of the main character. I will definitely read more by this author.

Terrific book! Excellent premise, character development, plotting, evocation of Moscow in the early Soviet Union. Superb writing, full of wit, grace, and small surprises.

This simply written story is unusually satisfying. It brings to mind both the idea that the relationships of one man can have far-reaching positive effects despite circumstances that conspire against him, and that if one adheres to one's values, then "by the smallest of one's actions one can restore some sense of order to the world....."

In "A Gentleman in Moscow," Amor Towels puts the events of a man's life under a microscope against the backdrop of the social and political upheaval in Russia during the first half of the twentieth century. The author does a great deal more, as well. He explores the benefits of appreciating what one has, especially when a person freedom is severely curtailed. Born in 1889 in St. Petersburg, Alexander Ilyich Rostov had enjoyed an idyllic childhood growing up on an estate with his aristocratic family. His situation has changed radically since those halcyon days. His sister Helena is dead, the Bolsheviks have taken over, and Rostov is now regarded as a "Former Person." It is June 1922, and for the past four years, the Count has resided in a suite in Moscow's elegant Hotel Metropol. One day, a party functionary smugly orders Rostov to remain in the hotel under house arrest or he will be summarily executed. Moreover, the Count will have to move upstairs to cramped quarters in the hotel's attic.

William Blake wrote the lines: "To see a World in a Grain of Sand/ And Heaven in a Wild Flower/ Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand/ And Eternity in an hour.” This theme applies perfectly to Count Alexander Rostov. He can either give in to despair or make the best of his reduced circumstances. By chance, he befriends a bright and curious nine-year-old named Nina who greatly cheers him and invites him on a series of adventures within the confines of the Metropol. Rostov also enjoys a warm relationship with the hotel's chef; bartender; captain of the dining room; in-house seamstress; and a beautiful actress, Anna Urbanova. Eventually, Rostov becomes the restaurant’s headwaiter, and he performs his duties meticulously. Meanwhile, as the years pass, he continues to enjoy fine wines, delicious meals, and lengthy philosophical conversations with his companions.

The first half of the book is atmospheric and absorbing. Its colorful cast of characters, lighthearted mood, and illuminating observations are impressive, but the pace is glacially slow. It is only in the second half, when Towels jumps ahead in time, that things start to get really interesting. Most noteworthy is the Count's unexpected opportunity to unofficially adopt and educate a child whom he grows to cherish. "A Gentleman in Moscow" is a resonant novel about love, loyalty, creativity, and the ability of someone with a fertile mind to remain thoughtful and optimistic in the face of adversity. I anticipated that the final chapter would be exceptional, but instead found it disappointingly flat and anticlimactic. This imaginative, witty, and charming tale deserved a more powerful conclusion.

There’s so much acclaim for this book, yet other than an occasional moment between Rostov and the two youngest females in the story, I just wasn’t anywhere near as charmed by it as so many others appear to have been.

I’m okay with a leisurely pace if there’s enough story to justify it, but this book is over four hundred pages and it feels generous to say that maybe two hundred of those pages saw some semblance of story that moved forward. I don’t know if this was an attempt to echo “great” Russian novels or something, if so, I guess that was accomplished, as much like when I slogged my way through War and Peace many years ago, this too felt like the author must have been paid by the word, taking every opportunity to stretch into several pages what could have been conveyed in one concise paragraph. Like War and Peace, for me, reading this this felt more like an endurance test than a pleasure.

Too often there would be an extremely short burst of plot only to dip into lengthy disruptive passages of tedious details and research. Whenever this eventually got around to resuming the story, you’d get something akin to a recap, you’d be told the characters were older, told this or that happened, this person is growing up, that person’s career is floundering or flourishing, etc., but you see very little of any of it unfold or the relationships genuinely develop and deepen. I know this book has to have won awards and hearts for a reason, but it all felt so surface level to me, the way it was told in this repeated pattern of a bit of story (usually involving a meals) followed by a dump of extraneous information, followed by a recap of the lives we didn’t actually see anyone living because while they were doing presumably interesting things off the page, on the page, the reader was stuck wading through those extraneous weeds. Or at least that was how I felt too much of the time, like I was stuck in a mostly stagnant cycle and missing out on key parts of the story, in particular Rostov’s transition into becoming a pivotal figure in a certain someone’s life and how that functioned for years without that person being removed, no one having any objection to it, etc., I needed more on that situation and how it could possibly have played out with so few hiccups of note.

Even though that situation was something I mostly enjoyed whenever the book meandered back to it, it was also part of another aspect of this novel I struggled with in addition to the pacing. I had a hard time with how fairytale easy everything goes here, that Rostov, a prisoner of sorts, could maintain that particular relationship unimpeded, that he still had so much freedom inside the hotel, so much access still to the finer things, and easy access to friendship and love and adoration, and even the ending, one of the rare bits of excitement in the entire novel, that too just struck me as a little too easy to ring true. I don’t know the real life history related to this, if hotel arrest in Moscow was as lackadaisical as it mostly appeared in this fictional take on it, so I could be totally off base, but I just found it challenging to buy that the Russia you always hear about would basically mollycoddle someone, that conditions wouldn’t be at least a little harsh.

When I read literary fiction as beloved as this one and don’t share in the prevailing sentiment, it does make me second guess my intelligence, like maybe I’m not smart enough to understand what was so great about this, and maybe that’s the case, maybe the depths of this just went over my head. All I know is that the way I experienced this book, it felt like it contained more filler than substance and even though I could feel the painstaking research seeping through nearly ever sentence, the story itself wasn’t all that believable.

If I could give this book 6 or 8 or 10 stars, I would. Exquisite, achingly beautiful prose, sharp, keen. READ IT.

I shouldn’t have liked this book. It is very much a long apologia for class hierarchy, even if it’s disguised as something quite the opposite. That said, it’s pretty great. The characters are fun to spend time with, the writing is quick and sharp, and the breadth of the story is encompassing. It didn’t hurt that I really love the Metropol Hotel, which was itself certainly one of the book’s main characters.

Excellent summary of almost forty years of post-tsarist Russia. Reflecting the ideological cruelty of the era and how human relationships are valued in that context. Highly recommended. (Translated from Spanish)

A very accomplished book, well written on its own terms, and with careful, somewhat intricate plotting. I think it's successful, just wasn't _that_ gripping to me. Didn't feel like it added up to much.