A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles

Amy


historical fiction


A Gentleman in Moscow is not my kind of novel. Most of it is plotless. Sure, the main character, the Count, oozes charm and you can’t help but like him despite the fact that he really does nothing substantial with his life for over 6 decades. (Of course, since he is under house arrest, he doesn’t have that chance for over half of his life.) He just exists with his upbringing and his family money and tries to make the best of it. He is not without his merits. He does care about manners and propriety. He does care about other people. And, he does a fine job raising a young woman when the situation is bestowed upon him. Only at the end of the novel does he truly DO something meaningful of his own accord to make him worthy of being a novel protagonist. And it is satisfying that the ending does have a plot, finally. But, it sure was a slog sometimes to get to that point.

The writing is well done and the stories told around his daily life are often interesting, but not always. The characters are all engaging. The author, Amor Towles, enjoys analogies and archetypes as a way of defending some of the Count’s attitudes and actions. In fact, I felt the allusions to the Swiss Family Robinson were apt because they, like he, were stuck in a location outside of their control in which they had to learn to survive and adapt.

Since I listened to the audio book, I am unable to provide a couple quotes that I might otherwise have given as a) an example about the author’s analogous listings and b) his fun description of jazz. The narrator, Nicholas Guy Smith, did a wonderful job with the material. I give him an A for his voice acting, various voices, and accents.

But, despite the writing and charming characters, its slow pace and lack of plot never drew me in. In fact, I might have stopped listening to it except that I had no other audio books on hand with which to set this one aside. In the end, I’m not sorry I read it but I can’t say that I loved it. I debated giving it 2-1/2 hearts but will allow the ending to edge it up to a 3-heart review.