Because of how much I LOVED
A Gentleman in Moscow, I had to read Towles' earlier novel. It was very good, but no comparison to the new book. From
Oprah:
In Amor Towles's debut novel, Rules of Civility
(Viking), post-Depression Manhattan—the glittering metropolis of
cocktails, jazz clubs, and glamorous apartment towers guarded by knowing
doormen—is also the city of profound reinvention. Towles's fascinating
narrator, Katey (née Katya) Kontent, works as a secretary at a
white-shoe law firm, where she deftly hides the fact that she's the
daughter of immigrant laborers. Refreshingly unconcerned about becoming
an old maid—she just turned 25!—she nevertheless finds herself in
competition with her roommate for the affections of one very attractive
patrician named Tinker Grey. ("How the Wasps loved to nickname their
children after the workaday trades: Tinker. Cooper. Smithy.") The
charming and cerebral Katey appears to have the edge, until Eve is badly
injured in a car accident in Tinker's roadster. Guilt-ridden, he moves
Eve into his elegant Central Park West apartment; she gets better, they
begin to travel together. As Katey learns about their escapades in
Europe and the finer New York suburbs, she tries to make do with other
privileged, sometimes more callow boys, but time has changed everything,
including her. In the crisp, noirish prose of the era, Towles portrays
complex relationships in a city that is at once melting pot and elitist
enclave—and a thoroughly modern heroine who fearlessly claims her place
in it.
And from Kirkus:
Manhattan in the late 1930s is the setting
for this saga of a bright, attractive and ambitious young woman whose
relationships with her insecure roommate and the privileged Adonis they
meet in a jazz club are never the same after an auto accident.
Towles' buzzed-about first novel is an affectionate return to the
post–Jazz Age years, and the literary style that grew out of it (though
seasoned with expletives). Brooklyn girl Katey Kontent and her
boardinghouse mate, Midwestern beauty Eve Ross, are expert flirts who
become an instant, inseparable threesome with mysterious young banker
Tinker Grey. With him, they hit all the hot nightspots and consume much
alcohol. After a milk truck mauls his roadster with the women in it,
permanently scarring Eve, the guilt-ridden Tinker devotes himself to
her, though he and she both know he has stronger feelings for Katey.
Strong-willed Katey works her way up the career ladder, from secretarial
job on Wall Street to publisher’s assistant at Condé Nast, forging
friendships with society types and not allowing social niceties to stand
in her way. Eve and Tinker grow apart, and then Kate, belatedly seeing
Tinker for what he is, sadly gives up on him. Named after George
Washington's book of moral and social codes, this novel documents with
breezy intelligence and impeccable reserve the machinations of wealth
and power at an historical moment that in some ways seems not so
different from the current one. Tinker, echoing Gatsby, is permanently
adrift. The novel is a bit light on plot, relying perhaps too much on
description. But the characters are beautifully drawn, the dialogue is
sharp and Towles avoids the period nostalgia and sentimentality to which
a lesser writer might succumb.
An elegant, pithy performance by a first-time novelist who couldn’t seem more familiar with his characters or territory.
