A Gentleman in Moscow

After a long time, I am feeling a strange sense of yearning after finishing a book. Like a part of me is over, a part of me that was vicariously living through a gentleman in an attic, as he went about his strange life of being a Former Person. His breakfast of cookies and coffee, his lunch of veal and chicken, his preference of entrees and appetisers, his wine pairing skills, the knack of placing customers at dinner such that no fights erupted in a freshly minted Russia just out of the revolution, the very beauty in being a Highness and being a waiter with the same aplomb. 

If Scarlett O ‘Hara is the protagonist with whom I relate the most, Rostov is the protagonist that I wish I were. With his keen curiosity and zest to take life on, be it on the rooftop or in the basement, Count Rostov has no dearth of variety in him, despite not having stepped out of The Metropol Hotel in over 35 years.

A Gentleman in Moscow is poetry, with symphony running in the background, in our minds, taking us through the life of Count Rostov as he begins his indefinite imprisonment in the hotel he was staying in, deigned to ignominy for the rest of his life. The story isn’t about his trials and tribulations, about him talking to himself and getting philosophical or about his learnings and appreciation for the smaller things in life. The story is his journey and a certain subtlety in romanticising his predicament, if you may call it a predicament. Many a book has romanticised sorrow, there is merit in beautifying the everyday struggle. It gets to the reader’s heart and tugs on it making her want more of the book. But, what Amor Towles has done with this piece is create a lilting melody that the reader doesn’t realise her heart is being tugged with. There is no moment for pity or nostalgia. There are friendships to be made, promises to be kept, surprises to be sprung, romantic rendezvous to be kept, and amusements to be had, many times at others’ expenses. 

This book could easily pass off as historical fiction, for it takes us through the journey of the Revolution, the rise of industrial Russia, the agricultural famine of the 30s, briefly touching upon world war 2, and ends around when Stalin dies. All through the Count’s eyes and his experiences, of course. Which is limited to the people he meets within the hotel. But, you need to be the Count (or vicariously him, or Amor Towles) to know that there is more to be learnt inside a hotel than in any other place in Moscow. 

Anyway, I am going to end this here, I need to taste my packaged honey to figure out if there’s a hint of lilac or apple in it, for where do bees in the highly polluted city of this millennium’s Bombay source their honey from? If you didn’t get that reference and you would like to, maybe it is time to spend some time with a certain gentleman who lived in the attic of The Metropol hotel in 1930s’ Russia. Meanwhile, like how the Count would go to bed after a snifter of Brandy every night, I would keep revisiting passages from this book on and off, because it’s that kind of a book, a sort of comfort when all else might be shaky and uninspiring.