A Gentleman in Moscow

 

by Pa Rock

Reader

Amazon.com, which is intimately familiar with my reading history through book orders and posted reviews, has recently spent an inordinate amount of time trying to convince me to buy a copy of The Lincoln Highway  by American author Amor Towles - which I eventually did.  But as I researched Towles and his latest novel, I decided that I would likely enjoy his preceding effort more - so I also purchased a copy of A Gentleman in Moscow, an exceptional book which I have just finished reading.

(I had the rare good fortune to be able to visit Moscow in the spring of 1999, and while I did not stay at the Metropol, the grand hotel at the center of this novel, I did stay nearby and was able to see and visit many of the places that Towles describes in his novel - like the Kremlin, the Bolshoi Theatre, and the department store adjacent to Red Square - and I was also in St. Petersburg which he references quite frequently - so I wanted to read this novel to rekindle a few good memories.)

A Gentleman in Moscow is the tale of Count Alexander Ilyich Rostov, a Russian aristocrat who was born twenty years or so before the end of the Romanov rule, and thus had a background of life as an elite in Russia.  Rostov had been out of the country during the Bolshevik Revolution, but returned to take care of family business and help some relatives to leave the country.   But Rostov,  himself, did not leave.  He moved to Moscow where he took up residence in the elegant Metropol Hotel.

Count Rostov quickly came to the attention of the new government over a poem that he had supposedly written and for which he took credit.  The poem, which the government viewed as subversive, led to his arrest and court trial, a trial which could have led to his execution.  The judge, however, viewed the Count as more of a harmless eccentric than a threat to the newly forming social order, and instead of imposing a death sentence, the judge ordered Count Rostov to be returned to his hotel and placed on a life sentence of house arrest - and he warned the Count that he would be shot if he ever left the Hotel Metropol.

When the Count returned to his hotel, he found that he no longer had his elegant suite, but had instead been transferred to a very small room in what was essentially the hotel's attic.  He was able to take as much of his personal furniture as he could fit into his new room - which was not much, but did include a desk in which he had secreted a fortune in gold coins - and he began his life anew.  The year was 1922, and he was destined to be a "guest" of the Metropol (and later an employee) for over thirty years - a time in which the world and the Count's beloved Russia were destined to change radically.

And the meat of this novel revolves around the life that Count Rostov, who soon transforms into Head Waiter Rostov, experiences while living in captivity at the Metropol:  his friendship with nine-year-old Nina, his affair with a beautiful actress, his close friendships with other members of the hotel staff, and life with the adoptive daughter who is unexpectedly thrust upon him.  It is a beautiful story, one that evokes the changes occurring in Russia during the first half of the twentieth century through the eyes and ears of someone standing at the elbows of the world's rich and powerful as they wine and dine their way through the communist bureaucracy and growth of the Soviet Union.

A Gentleman in Moscow is an exceptionally fine novel - and for me one that brought back many memories.  It is being made into a television series starring Kenneth Branagh.  I highly recommend the book - and am anxious to see how it translates to film.  

Time spent in the rooms, and lobby, and fine restaurants, and even the attic of the Metropol Hotel in Moscow is time well spent, and Count Alexander Ilyich Rostov is the ideal gentleman to charm with his knowledge of history, culture, cuisine, and intrigues.  He is the perfect host and tour guide.