The sleight of hand of a luxury hotel is to satisfy and surpass guests’ needs invisibly – to make so much luxury seem effortless. That same sleight of hand is applied in Amor Towles’ second novel, which is set almost entirely in the real-life Metropol, an Old World hotel that broke ground in 1899 and played host to decades of turmoil and new-nation building within its art nouveau walls. Towles takes this epic material and finesses it into a charming romp that never minimizes the horrors of Russia’s turbulent history.

At book’s beginning, Count Alexander Ros­tov is sentenced to lifelong house arrest in the Metropol. Relabeled a “Former Person” in the fledgling Soviet state, the count adapts to his confinement with a surprising malleability, finding the bright side to his reduced quarters and new purpose as headwaiter in the hotel’s restaurant, the Boyarsky, where apparatchiks and sultry screen stars dine and are destined to become players in the domino-tumble plot.

Towles unfurls his narrative in 32 years of stops-and-starts – lavishing attention on certain defining days, then skimming past whole years and announcing devastating fates in mere asides. This long game demands a close reading that is rewarded in the plot’s nesting-egg pleasures – the aha! moments when a bit player resurfaces to take center stage. (Towles occasionally delivers the reader a gentle tap, as in a footnote suggesting that a glanced-at character is “someone you should commit to memory, for years later he will have great bearing on the outcome of this tale.”) To a one, the many characters are vividly rendered, and none more so than our constant companion, the Count, an irresistible figure of both playfulness and probity.

A Gentleman in Moscow

by Amor Towles
Viking, 462 pp., $27

Amor Towles will speak about A Gentleman in Moscow in the session “The Tight Quarters of Time and Space,” with Maria Semple (Today Will Be Different) and moderator Amanda Eyre Ward, on Sun., Nov. 6, 3:30pm, in the Omni Ballroom, 700 San Jacinto.

This article appears in November 4 • 2016.

A note to readers: Bold and uncensored, The Austin Chronicle has been Austin’s independent news source for over 40 years, expressing the community’s political and environmental concerns and supporting its active cultural scene. Now more than ever, we need your support to continue supplying Austin with independent, free press. If real news is important to you, please consider making a donation of $5, $10 or whatever you can afford, to help keep our journalism on stands.

SUPPORT US

A graduate of the Michener Center for Writers at the University of Texas, Kimberley has written about film, books, and pop culture for The Austin Chronicle since 2000. She was named Editor of the Chronicle in 2016; she previously served as the paper’s Managing Editor, Screens Editor, Books Editor, and proofreader. Her work has been awarded by the Association of Alternative Newsmedia for excellence in arts criticism, team reporting, and special section (Best of Austin). The Austin Alliance for Women...