A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor TowlesMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
I thoroughly enjoyed listening to this book on Audible. The narrator was first-rate, and the storyline, characters, writing, and historical background well-crafted and engaging. I loved the premise of a Russian gentleman having to remake his life after being sentenced to house arrest in the aftermath of the Bolshevik Revolution. He has been living in a luxurious suite in a fancy Moscow hotel, but now he finds himself booted upstairs to a tiny room away from any important guests. It is fascinating to watch him try to come to terms with the narrowing of his choices, where the hotel becomes his entire world. A former man-about-town with no more family, he is now confined and facing loneliness. He is gregarious and charming, intelligent and clever, very well-read and a great storyteller and conversationalist, and yet he can no longer go out to meet friends and discuss his ideas, but instead must wait for them to come to him. If he is to bear this exile, he must be open to finding new companions among the hotel guests and staff and find meaningful ways to keep himself busy and useful. He has definite flaws and eccentricities that often hold him back, but maybe for that reason, I loved watching him navigate this new world of surprises and conundrums, unlikely friendships and loves, as well as of painful conflicts. The outside world inevitably intrudes into his inner sanctum, but he also finds that what happens in the small space he occupies can sometimes have significant affects on the world beyond the hotel doors. It is interesting to see that as his world contracts in some ways, it expands in others, and as he experiences so much loss, he also grows and gains much. What I loved most about this gentleman was his response to the turmoil of revolutionary ideals clashing with the corruption of power that he has witnessed himself in the hotel and that he learns from knowledgeable sources from the outside. As the picture becomes clearer to him, he begins to sift through the traditions and experiences of his own privileged upbringing, measuring them against the new ways of the revolution, rejecting from both what he comes to recognize as harmful and holding fast to that which he deems noble and worth fighting for.
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