Comment

Jul 21, 2019wyenotgo rated this title 3.5 out of 5 stars
Amor Towles spins a great story, populated with memorable characters. Above all, he takes the reader into an interesting place and time, fully drawn, absolutely engaging. Here the place is Moscow, the time, a period from 1922 to the mid 50s. The main characters here (especially down-to-earth, strong minded Nina) are exceptional. The overall scenario is intriguing. The writing flows well, the pacing and structure work well, so that even though the narrative covers well over 30 years, it never becomes an "epic" (the sort of book I will often find tiresome). And after the outstanding Rules of Civility I was greatly looking forward to this one. But I have some complaints: First, the entire story requires a generous amount of suspension of disbelief. We are at the height of the Stalinist era; an unrepentant aristocrat with a flippant attitude toward Bolshevik authority is not summarily shot or even sent to a gulag; his conduct while in house arrest fails to incur the wrath of the authorities; he succeeds in acquiring congenial employment, carries on a love affair, becomes a mentor and father figure to two young girls in succession, even establishes a strong friendship with a senior Soviet official, is permitted to be present at functions involving top level Soviet officials. He is allowed to unofficially adopt a child. The officials are confused about that child's true parentage. We're talking USSR here, where Big Brother watches everyone, not some petty dictatorship! Then the extreme conditions, disruption and hardships of WW2, wherein Russia barely succeeded in surviving the German onslaught seems to have hardly touched this 'magical kingdom' of the Metropol Hotel. The greatest inconvenience suffered by the Count and his friends seems to have been the imposition of officious, incompetent party bureaucrats and their favored appointees who interfere with the operation of the hotel. No great parade of purges, arrests, deportations to Siberia. And apart from some troublesome shortages, the dining room still continues to deliver gourmet meals. And several aspects of the story are contrived — no spoilers here, but several obvious obstacles to the Count's schemes are overcome far too conveniently. The realities of Stalinist Russia are kept very much in the background. So, a very pleasant piece of escapist reading but not to be taken seriously.