If a novel could win an award for best cinematography, this would take home the gold. Amor Towles's sophisticated retro-era novel of manners captures Manhattan 1938 with immaculate lucidity and a silvery focus on the gin and the jazz, the nightclubs and the streets, the pursuit of sensuality, and the arc of the self-made woman.The novel's preface opens in 1966, with a happily married couple attending a Walker Evans photography exhibition. An unlikely chance encounter stuns the woman, Katey--a pi...

ANOTHER UPDATE.... lolAnother $1.99 deal on this book today - A kindle download.Am I the only one that gets excited every time they just see a book pop up of one we loved? One of my favorite authors!!!JUICY GREAT NOVEL!!! $1.99 Kindle Download special today! — GREAT DEAL!!! (I spent more!) FANTASTIC....FABULOUS!!!!!! I LOVED THIS NOVEL TREMENDOUSLY!!!!This review is filled 'mostly' with quotes --as these are quotes I want to remember....yet without the context of the story itself ... there are N...

After reading A Gentleman in Moscow, I searched out this earlier work by Amor Towles, Rules of Civility, and found it every bit as entrancing and beautifully written. The story follows a young woman Katy Kontent over the course of one year -- 1938 -- going season by season as she makes friends, faces tragedies, finds and loses love, and makes her way through the breathless, ruthless, exhilarating world of Manhattan between the wars. This isn't a book that can be easily described by its plot. Wha...

This book was strange for me, at points, it was a 5, at other points a 1. There were passages (usually not parts of the narrative, but Katy's aphorisms - presumably the product of her middle-aged mind looking back) that moved me nearly to tears. These little nuggets are Katy's own "Rules of Civility" and they made the book worth reading. (E.g., "Right choices are the means by which life crystallizes loss.").But those little tidbits are not the bulk of this quite plotty pacey novel, which is a fa...

“Two roads diverged in a wood, and I,
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.”The road not taken by Robert Frost.Katey Kontent stands on her balcony overlooking Central Park in 1966 and reflects on the journey of her life and the road she chose to walk more than twenty years ago. Vulnerable and voluptuous like Billie Holiday’s voice in “Autumn in New York”, Katey remembers the one and only genuine love of her life, the irresistible banker Tinker Grey. “For many are...

Rules of civility is a book by Amor Towles. He is an author whose best book is A Gentleman in Moscow. Armed with this endorsement I began reading. I realised then that this book will be unforgotten by me. Who knows, maybe when I'm in my deathbed I'll think of it and die.I was thinking of giving the book only 4 stars. But how can that be, when I've read the book in two days flat? How can that be, when I didn't find one single page lacking in quality?In the book, people are real. They make love, t...

PrivilageRule 1: “Every Action in Company, ought to be with Some Sign of Respect, to those that are Present.”On New Year’s Eve 1937, just as America puts the Great Depression in its rearview and Europe is dangerously moving towards war, Katey Kontent and Eve Ross decide to enjoy the New Year celebrations in a New York Jazz Club. With a few dollars and a tight schedule of drinks, their evening seems quite limited, that is until Theodore ‘Tinker’ Grey, a young city banker, enters the club, and th...

Amor Towles is a master of the English language, and when you’re deep in one of his worlds, ours feels very far away. In one glittering sentence after another, he paints a portrait of a 1930s Manhattan filled with characters straight from the pages of a novel by Edith Wharton or F. Scott Fitzgerald. It’s beautiful, it’s poignant, and it’s very funny. An excellent choice if you’re looking to be whisked away.

Rules of Civility transported me to 1930s New York. It made me nostalgic for a city I've never been to and a time I've never lived in. Looking back, it's hard to put my finger on exactly what made this story so special. On the surface, there isn't anything terribly arresting about the plot itself. We follow Katey, a working class girl starting her adult life and trying to make it in New York. A chance encounter propels her to friendships with Manhattan's wealthy and elite, providing her with opp...

2021 Reread: This is my seventh time reading this book. I read it every June. Somehow, in a way I will never be able to fully describe, the book is comforting in its familiarity when I revisit it each year, but in so many ways, it's also brand new to me every time I pick it up. And during every readthrough, a different passage stays with me through the next twelve months, until my next reread. This year's:Mr. Tate smiled cooly.-How would you describe your ambitions?-They're evolving. 2020 Reread...

"The year 1938 had been one in which four people of great color and character had held welcome sway over my life."Katey Kontent and Eve Ross are ready to ring in the new year of 1938 at The Hotspot in Greenwich Village when the devastatingly handsome and moneyed banker with a Central Park West address walks in the door. Tinker Grey: "He had that certain confidence in his bearing, that democratic interest in his surroundings, and that understated presumption of friendliness that are only found in...

I’m late to the party so there isn’t much to say about this book that hasn’t already been said. What I will say is that I absolutely loved the writing, the characters, New York City in the late 1930’s, and the story!I was having a hard time picking a book and felt I was going into another slump so I went in a totally different direction and picked an older book on my TBR. I’m so glad I did because I loved it! I need to keep reminding myself that the newest books aren’t necessarily the best ones

Blargh, I'd been having such good luck with Goodreads Choice finalists.I really should have put it down after page two, when the female, working-class narrator describes her roommate as follows:"Eve was one of those surprising beauties from the American Midwest.In New York it becomes so easy to assume that the city's most alluring women have flown in from Paris or Milan. But they're just a minority. A much larger covey hails from the stalwart states that begin with the letter I--like Iowa or Ind...

The prologue to this novel takes place at an exhibition of photographs by Walker Evans in 1966. The author tells us that Evans had waited 25 years to show these photos to the public due to a concern for the subjects' privacy. The photos are taken with a hidden camera in a NYC subway car and "captured a certain naked humanity." Katey, our protagonist, sees an old friend, Tinker Grey, in two of these pictures. In one he's clean shaven, wearing a custom shirt and a cashmere coat. In a photo dated o...

”She was indisputably a natural blonde. Her shoulder-length hair, which was sandy in summer, turned golden in the fall as if in sympathy with the wheat fields back home. She had fine features and blue eyes and pinpoint dimples so perfectly defined that it seemed like there must be a small steel cable fastened to the center of each inner cheek which grew taut when she smiled. True, she was only five foot five, but she knew how to dance in two-inch heels--and she knew how to kick them off as soon

This is just delightful fun. It's a love letter, a limerick, a lollipop, a literary longing. Grab your shaker of martinis and your cocktail onions and take a ride with Katey Kontent through the streets of 1938 Manhattan. She's just a working girl trying to make it on her own, but with the right (or wrong?) friends, she manages to borrow a little glamour...and a helping or two of trouble besides. The book is not without its flaws. I was only going to rate it four stars. After I read the epilogue

I waffled between a one or two star rating, but I'm not feeling particularly generous today, so one star it is.Basically: upper-class middle-aged man tries to write as/about working-class young woman. And fails. I think I enjoyed about the first twenty pages of this one, and the rest just fell utterly flat. First of all, the main character (with the terrible name of Katey Kontent) was completely unconvincing and not at all compelling. It's rare that men can write convincingly in a female voice,

Towles’ first novel is light and enjoyable, but it didn’t wow me as A Gentleman in Moscow did. It’s the story of an extraordinary and transformative year in the life of 22-year old Katey Kontent in New York City in 1938. “Many are called, but few are chosen”This novel opens with the famous lines from Matthew 22:8-14 which Walker Evans used for the title of his book of covert photos of subway passengers, taken in 1938 and published in 1966, Many are Called. Image: One of Walker Evans’ subway phot...

This was my book club April selection. I am not the biggest fan of historical fiction, so I never would have chosen this book for myself despite the adoration that Towles gets from everyone. I really liked this book, so another win for the book club! I started out reading a paper copy, but the book is written without quotation marks and that isn't the easiest thing to read. It's clunky and doesn't flow well. So I switched to the audiobook and that made all the difference. It truly made this book...

This is the rare example of a book that makes you appreciate the art of writing. It is indeed remarkable that this first time author has created a debut novel that succeeds in every way. Mr. Towles has crafted a true masterpiece. This stylish, elegant and deliberately anachronistic debut novel transports readers back to Manhattan in 1938, where authentic, human characters inhabit a playground that comes alive with the manners of a society on the verge of radical upheaval.This book is art deco, j...