A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles

What is the standard a good book is measured by?

Is it its sense of adventure and thrill or that indescribable feeling of emotional attachment to a character? I’d say the day I turned the final page for ‘A Gentleman in Moscow’, this book became my new paradigm.

Let me set the stage for you, our story begins in the era of the Bolshevik revolution in Russia. We start in 1922, with a young Count Alexander Rostov Ilyich who has been denounced as a ‘Person’ in the Bolshevik’s trial and is, due to his previous revolutionary efforts, leniently sentenced to house arrest in the ‘Metropol’ hotel to live out his days in. Therefore, we begin with Alexander, a character we come to love more for his quirks than his assumed sophistication. His character resonates with one word through this entire book consistently.

Resilient.

Coming down from a position of immense privilege to living in a 100 square feet room in the Metropol hotel, doesn’t elicit anything even close to a complaint from the Count. Instead, he shows authority and magnanimity even in situations that don’t always seem to go his way. His persona is flourished as one that allures everyone, so do his charming demeanor and witty remarks. In fact, he even gets away in creating a secret study inside the empty crawl space behind the closet. As strange as that is, his ingenuity cannot be denied.

As uninteresting a house arrest can get, we are given a story that was far from it. When it comes to the introduction of paramount characters, the first and most pivotal we collide with is Nina, a 9-year old, spunky, and no-nonsense girl. She approaches the Count quite boldly for her age and quickly strikes a very unusual but fun friendship with him. It seemed to me that the Count took this opportunity to experience his childhood once again, for his memories with his deceased sister were so profoundly impressed into his life, that a chance to enjoy those childlike moments again probably felt like a gift on its own.

Despite one of the central plots revolving around Nina and the Count, there is a very prevalent presence throughout the book from characters like Chef Emile, Maître’d Andrey, Seamstress Marina, and Actress Anna Urbanova. These characters all breathe vibrant life into the story and make the Count’s experience that much more relatable right from the unwavering friendship of the ‘Triumvirate’, to the eccentric romance that spurs between the Count and Anna over the years. The Count’s life within the four walls of the Metropol embodies the concept of less is more as it defines our lives as being rooted in people and not material things.

1938 brings about a tumultuous time as Nina leaves her 5-year-old daughter, Sofia with the Count to find her captive husband. It was a heart-rending goodbye to a character like Nina, as it wasn’t just the Count who had seen her grow into the confident and strong-willed woman she was. Despite her never being able to return to her daughter, Nina’s memory lives on with the Count and the headstrong woman that Sofia comes to be.

The Count initially struggles with his job and balancing a child as he raises Sofia. It is apparent that knowledge and education can prepare you for many things, save parenthood. With his wacky misadventures and innovative experiments at parenting, we feel the rollercoaster that entails raising your own child, whether it be that fierce overprotectiveness or that unapologetic love and pride. Sofia becomes the Count’s foremost priority, and as she grows, we see the Count remake and begin a whole new life with novel traditions and games, almost like him getting a second chance at a normal life. It truly touches our expectations of parenthood, as we learn that the love a parent illustrates extends beyond relations of blood and genes.

“In the end, a parent’s responsibility could not be more simple: To bring a child safely into adulthood so that she could have a chance to experience a life of purpose and, God willing, contentment.”

Life goes on, and our characters age. Wars come and fade, leaders rise and fall, but nothing is to prepare for the final twist this book climaxes upon. Their escape was one of the most noteworthy endings I have ever read. What I mistook for the Count’s mischievous tricks, as was his nature, in stealing things and breaking into hotel rooms, morphed into one of the most enlivening escape plans I have come across. A personal highlight, undoubtedly, would be the simultaneous ringing of 30 phones in the hotel wreaking havoc on staff while the Count escaped!

This book culminates to love of the highest form as the Count lets Sofia leave Russia while he returns to his hometown and reunites with Anna Urbanova. This is fitting as the Count frees Sofia to live and pursue her dreams outside Russia while he returns to Idle-hour as he continuously longs to throughout the book.

There’s no secret, that the premise of this book rests upon relationships. A relationship between friends, between family, between lovers, between enemies. This book, to me, is a symbol of those bonds and of the notion in which our lives are fashioned by the people we meet and cherish as well as come to dislike. The irony of an aristocrat settling into a life of the unknown is a theme expressed as its best throughout while the spectacle of love that transcended generations and the friendships that redefined loyalties are to stand as a new benchmark for us in the real world to truly reconsider.

“Who would have imagined,” he said, “when you were sentenced to life in the Metropol all those years ago, that you had just become the luckiest man in all of Russia.”