h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I think it might be better to put my pieces on conversations, otherwise my A page will get very long. So here is my 5 November entry.

A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles

It seems a strange thing to do – write a novel about a Russian nobleman who is placed under house arrest in a hotel in Moscow. Yet that is what Amor Towles has done. We meet Count Alexander Rostov being prosecuted by a Committee, having returned to Moscow after the revolution. They decide not to shoot him, because a poem he is credited with writing is regarded as espousing the pre revolutionary cause. They confine him to the Hotel Metropol and make him leave his elegant suite for a small room in the attic. Instead of despairing, the Count acknowledges that ‘if a man does not master his circumstances then he is bound to be mastered by them.’ He makes the best of what he has available: a secret hoard of gold coins, the fine food provided by the hotel, and good relations with the staff.

He meets a young girl called Nina, who is the daughter of an official, but is fascinated by the Count’s stories of the old aristocracy. She has a passkey and takes him round the hotel, exploring its hidden places. Inspired by their discoveries, the Count explores and finds an empty room beyond his own which he turns into a study. After Nina heads off to school, the Count meets a beautiful actress who, at first encounter seems haughty, but they become lovers. The Count lives through some difficult times in Russia – Stalin’s purges and the Second World War, but he is strangely insulated by his imprisonment in the hotel. However, his friend Nina returns with her daughter and explains that she wants to go looking for her husband, who has been sent away. She entrusts her daughter Sofia to the care of the Count.

This is a book of considerable charm, despite dealing with some dark events. The Count copes with his position with wit, courtesy and determination.