#33 [2024/CBR16] A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles

I started A Gentleman in Moscow (2016) by Amor Towles with high expectations. When my book club chose this book, one of my friends (who often aligns with me as far as liking similar novels) said it was one of her favorite books. And then the New York Times had it high on its list of best books of the 21st Century. Even when I started the first chapter, I really liked the tone of the novel. Unfortunately, my expectations were a little too high. This is not one of my favorite books. I didn't mind it, but I had a hard time getting into it. 

In 1922, Count Alexander Rostov is sentenced by a Bolshevik tribunal to house arrest in the Metropol for being an unrepentant aristocrat. The Metropol is a very fancy hotel in Central Moscow. Instead of dismantling the posh hotel, the Bolshevik higher ups, as well as foreign journalists, use it for themselves.

Count Rostov is forced out of his spacious accommodations and put up in a tiny, old attic room. He spends his next thirty or so years in that hotel. One of the first people he really interacts with is a precocious little girl named Nina. They explore the hotel together and become friends, although she eventually leaves the hotel to go to school.

Another significant person in the Count's life is the famous actress, Anna Urbanova. It's mostly just attraction, especially at first. However, they regularly see each other when she is in town. Count Rostov also has some important friendships with a number of staff at the hotel. 

At some point, Nina comes back to the hotel--a young adult now. She has become a devoted member of the party and is sent off on a mission for the country. She ends up marrying one of the young men on her team and having a little girl. The next time she sees Rostov, she is rather desperate. Her husband has been arrested and sent to Siberia. She wants Rostov to watch over her daughter, Sofia, at the hotel while she follows her husband and gets settled up there. Suddenly the Count is, for all intents and purposes, the guardian of a young girl.

My favorite parts of this book were when the Count was interacting with either Nina or Sofia. The children seemed to bring a little life to the book and the Count, and really showed his humanity. In fact, looking back on it, there were a number of memorable scenes that I did enjoy reading. But these scenes were often sandwiched between pages where I would get a little bored. On the whole, it did not suck me in as much as I was expecting.

First, Count Rostov did not feel like a real person to me. I guess he was very reserved, but his feelings didn't show through on the pages. Second, I wish there was more detail explaining what was going on--both outside and inside of the hotel. Dramatic life and death things were happening with his friends and the world, but they're only hinted at. Finally, this book sometimes seemed more like a fable than historical fiction. Rostov was always safe and never got into trouble. Either circumstances just allowed everything to work out or a friend stepped in at the last moment. Again, this made it feel less real to me because I never worried about him. 

I also kept getting distracted because I was wondering how his life imprisonment at the hotel worked financially. I know he had gold coins, but the Bolsheviks didn't know that. Was he paying for his room and board, or was he "assigned" to the hotel, so the hotel just had to house him? What if he didn't have those gold coins? What if he ran out of money? 

I give this novel props for its originality, and there's nothing I really disliked about it. It just didn't draw me in as much as I was expecting.