A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles, published in 2016, is a pleasant book, so playful and light that I fully expected to find, once I’d finished reading the novel, that a feel-good movie was planned starring Tom Hanks as Count Alexander Rostov.
I was wrong.
It’ll be a feel-good mini-series, starring Kenneth Branagh as Count Alexander Rostov.
On the way to finding that out, I stumbled across a review that called the book Tolstoyan and asserted that it was a worthy update of the Great Russian Novel.
I think that reviewer is wrong.
True, like Anna Karenina, there is an attempted suicide in A Gentleman in Moscow. The difference is that, in Tolstoy’s masterpiece, Anna is successful, while the Count’s plan is interrupted comically at the last second by an old man obsessed with bees.
True, A Gentleman in Moscow is set in Russia as are all Great Russian Novels. But where is the existential angst in the Towles book? Where is the evil?
The closest thing to evil is a small-minded party member who’s nicknamed the Bishop for his overweening pomposity. But his appearance on the page never elicits dread. Instead, he’s a comic figure who sets in motion comic actions and reactions.
Although the novel is set in the Post-Revolution Soviet Union, during which millions of people died through starvation, exile or murder, there are only passing references to such depressing facts.
The worst thing that happens — the disappearance of the Count’s friend Nina and her husband after being exiled — occurs offstage.
And, truth be told, it’s simply a plot-twist to enable Towles to maneuver the Count into position to have to take responsibility for Nina’s five-year-old daughter Sofia.
General warmth and cuddliness ensues.
Patrick T. Reardon
5.16.18
Written by : Patrick T. Reardon
For more than three decades Patrick T. Reardon was an urban affairs writer, a feature writer, a columnist, and an editor for the Chicago Tribune. In 2000 he was one of a team of 50 staff members who won a Pulitzer Prize for explanatory reporting. Now a freelance writer and poet, he has contributed chapters to several books and is the author of Faith Stripped to Its Essence. His website is https://patricktreardon.com/.
The Book is charming and beautifully written but I wanted more of the history and less of the quirkiness and fairy tale style story and for me the book just dragged and I just didn’t connect with the story or the characters. This is more about my ability to enjoy this style of story for what it is than the author’s telling of the story as the writing and prose is beautiful but the book was too drawn out for me.