A GENTLEMAN IN MOSCOW

What a wonderful novel. What marvelous prose. I likened Amor Towles’ writing style to the writers of yesteryear. I can’t remember when I read a modern novel that matched his artistry as a wordsmith. Add his storytelling ability to the above talents and walah, you have his second New York Times bestseller. The story is well thought out: In 1922, an aristocrat, Count Alexander Ilyich Rostov, returns to Moscow after a four year stay in Paris. He finds himself now a enemy of the ruling party of Bolsheviks (the Worker's Party) led by Vladimir Lenin. The last Tsar, Nicholas II, is dead and so is the conception of royalty and their privileged lifestyle. It seems the Count wrote a poem, Where is it now? in 1913 (four years before the fall of the Tsar). The poem had nothing to do with Lenin’s revolution, but the Emergency Committee of the People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs accused the Count of writing against the Worker Party. The party’s prosecutor wants to know if the Count “came back with the intention of taking up arms and, if so, whether for or against the Revolution.” The Count says, “By that point, I’m afraid that my days of taking up arms were behind me.” The prosecutor wants to know what Rostov’s occupation is. Rostov says, “It is not the business of gentlemen to have occupations.” The Prosecutor then asks, “Very well then. How do you spend your time?” Rostov says, “Dining, discussing. Reading, reflecting. The usual rigmarole.” I’m only on page five and I was hooked already.

Later on on page five and six, the Committee decides the Count’s fate after a twelve minute recess, “Alexander Ilyich Rostov, taking into full account your own testimony, we can only assume that the clear-eyed spirit who wrote the poem Where is it now? has succumbed irrevocably to the corruptions of his class - and now poses a threat to the very ideals he once espoused. On that basis, our inclination would be to have you taken from this chamber and put against the wall. But there are those within the senior ranks of the Party who count you among the heroes of the pre-revolutionary cause. Thus, it is the opinion of this committee that you should be returned to the hotel of which you are so fond. But make no mistake: should you ever set foot outside the Metropol again, you will be shot. Next Matter.” It’s obvious that the Bolsheviks want the remaining royalty silenced. By the way, The Metropol is a real luxury hotel in Moscow. Is this a great idea for a novel or what? Can the Count live in a hotel for the rest of his life with no hope of enjoying his customary stroll around Theatre Square? After his sentencing, he is escorted back to the hotel, but not to his luxury suite. His new living quarters will be a small attic room that will not fit all his stuff (for the lack of a better word). He takes some of his furniture and possessions up stairs...the rest of his belongings are now the property of the people.

On page 16, the Metropol Hotel employees were bewildered: “When he had been carted off that morning, they had all assumed that he would never return. He had emerged from behind the walls of the Kremlin like an aviator from the wreckage of a crash.” Since the Count had already resided in the hotel for four years, he knew all the employees by name. “My dear friends,” said the Count, “no doubt you are curious as to the day’s events. As you may know, I was invited to the Kremlin for a tete-a-tete. There, several duly goateed officers of the current regime determined that for the crime of being born an aristocrat, I should be sentenced to spend the rest of my days...in this hotel.” Everybody cheered! So at this point (page 16), the novel starts for real. The author turns the Count’s next 30 plus years in the hotel into an exciting and intriguing filled drama. You will become familiar with the hotel’s restaurants, bars and employees; it’s famous and not so famous guests, but most of all you will get the flavor of communism’s early years. It’s almost like the movie, Casablanca, but not played out in Rick’s bar (do you remember the bar’s owner, Humphrey Bogart?), but played out in the Metropol Hotel with the undertones of communism instead of Casablanca’s Nazi atmosphere. Overall, I was mesmerized by Amor Towles’ story and extraordinary prose. Get your copy now...you will not be sorry.

RATING: 5 out of 5 stars

Comment: I got my copy of A Gentleman in Moscow in December 2016 at a Barnes and Noble store during their annual “signed copy” sale (it took me a year later to finally get around to read it). If you haven’t visited that signed edition December sale...you should next year.

I was amazed how a tyrant like Joseph Stalin could be mourned by so many after he died on 3/3/1953. The man also known as Dear Father, Vozhd, Koba and Soso ruled Russia with a iron fist for about thirty years was surprisingly bewailed by the Russian population. An excerpt from page 349 of Towles novel examines the reasons why:

“On the sixth, Harrison Salisbury, the new Moscow bureau chief of The New York Times, stood in the Count’s old rooms to watch as members of the Presidium arrived in a cavalcade of ZIM limousines and as Soso’s coffin, taken from a bright blue ambulance, was borne ceremoniously inside. And on the seventh, when the Palace of Unions was opened to the public. Salisbury watched in some amazement as the line of citizens waiting to pay their respects stretched five miles across the city.”

“Why, many Western observers wondered, would over a million citizens stand in line to see the corpse of a tyrant? The flippant said it must have been to ensure that he was actually dead; but such a remark did not do justice to the men and women who waited and wept. In point of fact, legions mourned the loss of the man who had led them to victory in the Great Patriotic War against the forces of Hitler; legions more mourned the loss of the man who had so single-mindedly driven Russia to become a world power; while others simply wept in recognition that a new era of uncertainty had begun.”

Whatever the reason was, it didn’t matter to Nikita Khrushchev, who watched the spectacle on the sidelines...while he waited for his turn to abuse the Russian people.