A Generous Heart

A Gentleman in Moscow 

by Amor Towles

“He had said that our lives are steered by uncertainties, many of which are disruptive or even daunting; but that if we persevere and remain generous of heart, we may be granted a moment of lucidity—a moment in which all that has happened to us suddenly comes into focus as a necessary course of events, even as we find ourselves on the threshold of the life we had been meant to lead all along.”   ― Amor Towles, A Gentleman in Moscow



Imagine an aristocratic man in the Soviet Union of the 1920s who has lost favor with the Communist bureaucracy. This novel takes that situation and puts the man, Count Rostov, in house arrest of a sort in an endlessly inventive narrative. The tale evolving  from this situation is suspenseful, interesting, and entertaining. 

With the tale of Count Alexander Rostov, A Gentleman in Moscow transports us to a different gorgeously rendered era. The count is placed under house imprisonment in the Metropol, a luxurious hotel located across the street from the Kremlin, in 1922 after being found to be an unrepentant aristocracy by a Bolshevik tribunal. Since Rostov has never worked a day in his life, he is forced to reside in an attic room as some of the most turbulent decades in Russian history take place outside the hotel. Rostov is an unflappable man of intelligence and wit. Unexpectedly, his more limited circumstances open a gateway to a vaster universe of emotional exploration for him.

This intelligent and witty Count is a man of many interests but his love of books and reading was what intrigued me the most. It is highlighted by the importance of the Essays of Montaigne in Rostov's life. Montaigne's wit and skeptical approach to life seems to have grounded the Count, providing support for his unique living situation. Amor Towles has created another fictional world with sufficient historical under-pinning's to provide readers with delightful hours of reading.