Author: Amor Towles
Year Published: 2019
Genre: Adult fiction
Pages: 462
Rating: 4 out of 5
Location (my 2019 Google Reading map): Russia and France
FTC Disclosure: I bought this book with my own money
Summary (from the inside flap of the book): When, in 1922, the thirty-year-old Count is deemed an unrepentant aristocrat by a Bolshevik tribunal, he is sentenced to house arrest in the Metropol, a grand hotel across the street from the Kremlin. An indomitable man of erudition and wit, Rostov must now live in an attic room while some of the most tumultuous decades in Russian history are unfolding outside the hotel's doors.
Unexpectedly, the Count's reduced circumstances provide him entry to a much larger world of emotional discovery as he forges friendships with the hotel's other denizens, including a willfull actress, a shrewd Kremlinite, a gregarious American, and a temperamental chef. But when fate suddenly puts the life of a young girl in his hands, he must draw on all his ingenuity to protect the future she so deserves.
Review: Everyone seems to really like this book, but it didn't totally work for me.
The characters are varied and interesting; I felt as if I got to know them and what makes them who they are. I liked their interactions and the way we came to understand Russia during these decades through them. The setting is also good. I liked that the main character was confined to the hotel as it made the author be very clever in his use of space as well as the descriptions of the hotel itself.
For me it just didn't work with the type of book I like to read. Perhaps too literary for me? Too slow? I'm not sure, but I know the issue is with me and not the book since so many people have loved it.
Challenges for which this counts:
FTC Disclosure: I bought this book with my own money
Summary (from the inside flap of the book): When, in 1922, the thirty-year-old Count is deemed an unrepentant aristocrat by a Bolshevik tribunal, he is sentenced to house arrest in the Metropol, a grand hotel across the street from the Kremlin. An indomitable man of erudition and wit, Rostov must now live in an attic room while some of the most tumultuous decades in Russian history are unfolding outside the hotel's doors.
Unexpectedly, the Count's reduced circumstances provide him entry to a much larger world of emotional discovery as he forges friendships with the hotel's other denizens, including a willfull actress, a shrewd Kremlinite, a gregarious American, and a temperamental chef. But when fate suddenly puts the life of a young girl in his hands, he must draw on all his ingenuity to protect the future she so deserves.
The characters are varied and interesting; I felt as if I got to know them and what makes them who they are. I liked their interactions and the way we came to understand Russia during these decades through them. The setting is also good. I liked that the main character was confined to the hotel as it made the author be very clever in his use of space as well as the descriptions of the hotel itself.
For me it just didn't work with the type of book I like to read. Perhaps too literary for me? Too slow? I'm not sure, but I know the issue is with me and not the book since so many people have loved it.
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