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A review by halfcactus
A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles
3.0
Quirky and intermittently bleak historical fiction that follows (and critiques) the trajectory of the Russian Revolution. Count Alexander Ilyich Rostov is tried and sentenced to a lifetime of confinement in the Metropol for being a class enemy, but he opts to embrace what life has to offer. Life embraces back.
For most of the novel you follow him through his routine from his little room in the attic to the fancy restaurant, barbershop, etc etc, and he gets to grow emotionally and find family among the hotel staff and some of the guests. Over the course of thirty years, the various effects and undulations of the Revolution trickle into his little life.
I'm generally pretty blind to history so I guess it was useful for me to have this contextualized in fiction (even though I skip-read a lot of the early bits ^^;). Rostov's that type of wish-fulfillment Gary Stu that is mostly inoffensive but I simply don't care about. He's a ~gentleman~, one of the last true ones in Russia, which means all the cool people like him and are impressed by him. There are some found family beats I found touching, but I'm not a fan of fatherhood fantasies where the daughter is precocious and emotionally well-adjusted. Again, I don't think this is one of the worst offenders since the daughter figures are still characters in their own right and it's very sweet that they change his life and his priorities. I just think it shouldn't be this convenient, especially with one of them going through a lot of trauma.
For most of the novel you follow him through his routine from his little room in the attic to the fancy restaurant, barbershop, etc etc, and he gets to grow emotionally and find family among the hotel staff and some of the guests. Over the course of thirty years, the various effects and undulations of the Revolution trickle into his little life.
I'm generally pretty blind to history so I guess it was useful for me to have this contextualized in fiction (even though I skip-read a lot of the early bits ^^;). Rostov's that type of wish-fulfillment Gary Stu that is mostly inoffensive but I simply don't care about. He's a ~gentleman~, one of the last true ones in Russia, which means all the cool people like him and are impressed by him. There are some found family beats I found touching, but I'm not a fan of fatherhood fantasies where the daughter is precocious and emotionally well-adjusted. Again, I don't think this is one of the worst offenders since the daughter figures are still characters in their own right and it's very sweet that they change his life and his priorities. I just think it shouldn't be this convenient, especially with one of them going through a lot of trauma.