Archive for the ‘Amor Towles’ Tag
Of the authors, dead or alive, who’d prompt me to be a groupie is Amor Towles (obviously among the latter category). His newest novel, The Lincoln Highway, is nearly 600 pages and I couldn’t wait to get lost in it. I did have to wait awhile for a copy, but once I held it in hand I felt like a kid on the first day of school: excited and apprehensive about what was to come.
Emmett Watson has just returned to his rural Nebraska home having served time for involuntary manslaughter. He plans to start a new life in Texas with his eight-year-old, wise-beyond-his-years brother, Billy, who has other ideas: to head west. He’s certain they’ll find their estranged mother in San Francisco and insists they travel the Lincoln Highway, a coast-to-coast route.
However, Emmett’s friends, Duchess and Woolly from the work farm, appear having stowed away in the trunk of a car. They have different plans for traveling the Highway, and they steal Emmett’s prized Studebaker to head east.
Emmett and Billy’s story becomes one of reclaiming not only the car but their journey’s purpose; Duchess and Woolly have other goals. All their adventures involve a cast of characters from the sublime to the absurd. What’s initially Emmett’s story soon becomes Duchess’s – his are the first person voice chapters; the others use third person voice.
The Lincoln Highway is an odyssey filled with heroes and monsters. It’s also where friends become family – with some selfish members and some more likeable than others.
The Lincoln Highway
Four-and-a-half Bookmarks
Viking Books, 2021
576 pages
Epic Russian novels have long appealed to me for many reasons: the history, the descriptions of stark landscapes and lively urban settings, the storytelling, and the names. Ah, the names.
Author Amor Towles ties all these elements together in A Gentleman in Moscow.
Count Alexander Ilyich Rostov, known as Sasha among a few and as the Count among many, is sentenced to house arrest at Moscow’s grand Metropol Hotel in 1922. This is an engrossing tale about a man who grew up with every comfort and advantage during tsarist Russia. Although his lifestyle changes, it unexpectedly expands.
At the beginning of his confinement, the mother country is in the early stages of political and economic changes that continue for decades. The Count is undeterred by his reversal of fortunes. Towles presents a contented man, knowledgeable, kind, charismatic, happy with routines, yet imaginative. As the Count’s story moves through the years he faces challenges greater than the restrictions of his movements, but always with a good attitude.
Towles injects humor and history with a hotel guestbook of intriguing characters. Interestingly, each chapter begins with the letter A, like the count’s (and author’s) first name.
Here is a novel of the never-wanting-it-to-end variety. The Count’s humanity, his relationships/friendships, and the rich memories of his childhood overshadow his loss of freedom. At times it’s easy to forget that he is a captive in a majestic hotel. He can’t actually check out any time he wants, but why would he want to leave?
A Gentleman in Moscow
Five Bookmarks
Amor Towles
Viking, 2016
462 pages
Rules of Civility might sound like an oxymoron today, but author Amor Towles has crafted an engaging novel set in 1938 about social mores that provides plenty to contemplate now.
Katey Kontent (as in the adjective, not the noun) is the narrator whose memory is jarred at an art exhibit in 1966 which takes her back to that one eventful year and the cast of characters who filled it. Katey is a lively, intelligent 25-year-old trying to survive in New York City. A chance encounter on New Year’s Eve 1937 sets the stage for her friendships, romantic relationships, disappointments and her career.
Towles evokes a lively, and noir-ish, portrait of New York City where martinis, jazz and social status dictate. He does so with humor and emotion. Katey works in a secretarial pool in a large financial firm, but her interests lie elsewhere. No sooner is she promoted then she quits to work for an editor past his prime: “He stopped taking on projects and watched with quiet reserve as his authors died off one by one – at peace with the notion that he would join them soon enough in that circle of Elysium reserved for plot and substance and the judicious use of the semicolon.”
Plot and substance are the stuff of Towles writing, which focuses on Katey’s relationship with Tinker Grey, a dashing banker of means. Through Tinker, she has access to upper society, although, as is often the case, appearances in any circle aren’t always what they appear.
Rules of Civility
Four-and-a-half Bookmarks
Penguin Books, 2011
335 pages, which includes The Young George Washington’s Rules of Civility and Decent Behavior in Company and Conversation
The Blue Page Special 