Book Review: A Gentleman In Moscow, by Amor Towles

Genre: Historical fiction
Date Published: September 2106
Publisher: Viking
# Of Pages/Listening Time: 462 pages/18 hours

Goodreads | Audible

Synopsis: He can’t leave his hotel. You won’t want to.
From the New York Times bestselling author of Rules of Civility—a transporting novel about a man who is ordered to spend the rest of his life inside a luxury hotel.
In 1922, Count Alexander Rostov is deemed an unrepentant aristocrat by a Bolshevik tribunal, and is sentenced to house arrest in the Metropol, a grand hotel across the street from the Kremlin. Rostov, an indomitable man of erudition and wit, has never worked a day in his life, and must now live in an attic room while some of the most tumultuous decades in Russian history are unfolding outside the hotel’s doors. Unexpectedly, his reduced circumstances provide him entry into a much larger world of emotional discovery.
Brimming with humor, a glittering cast of characters, and one beautifully rendered scene after another, this singular novel casts a spell as it relates the count’s endeavor to gain a deeper understanding of what it means to be a man of purpose.

My Rating:

 ★★★★

.....For warming my heart.

My Thoughts:

I've been meaning to read this for ages, and now I'm glad I did. The writing was well done, and I liked the story; it showed a part of Russian history I knew very little about.

When I learned about Russia in my high school history, my teachers would talk about the Russian Revolution, and a tiny bit about the tumultuous period afterwards, but then they would switch over to the U.S. perspective of the Cold War, and you stopped learning about what was happening to the Russian people.

It never occurred to me that certain people were put under permanent house arrest after the Revolution. This interesting little fact made for a great story, allowing us to see Moscow in a new light, despite the fact that we never really got a peek outside of the hotel the Count lived in. I love the Count; he's a great character. He's smart, resourceful, and above all he's a man you can like. I also loved all the people who work in the hotel, excepting the Bishop of course (you have to have a physical villain in a book, and the Bishop was perfect for the role). Overall, this was a very good novel. It definitely deserves the attention it's been getting from all the book clubs in the area. There's a lot to discuss with this book and it's worth every minute of it. Highly recommended.