Rules of Civility by Amor Towles

I’ve read this book before but I so much enjoyed rereading it almost ten years later. This time, I took the book slowly, reading just a few pages at a time instead of greedily gulping the story down as I so often do. Amor Towles is a magician with words and imagery. There were times where I just stopped and thought about how he had phrased things, how original and clever his metaphor is. This time too I felt that I recognized a distinct Great Gatsby influence, which I don’t think I was aware of before. The book is set in roughly the same period, and charts the entry of a working class girl, Katey Kontent, into the upper echelons of New York society. Its characters are thoughtless and hedonistic, and at times as arguably corrupt as Mr Gatsby himself. And of course a love story runs through as the backbone of the novel. I think I still prefer A Gentleman in Moscow, but both books are thoughtful observations of a class system – albeit one in the US and one in Russia – seen through the eyes of characters that you can warm to. Lovely, lovely, lovely. My favourite book(s) at the moment. I can’t wait to see what Amor Towles produces next.