Rules of Civility

Take [b:The Great Gatsby 4671 The Great Gatsby F. Scott Fitzgerald https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1490528560l/4671.SY75.jpg 245494], jump ahead ten years, and omit most of the tragedy and you'll get Rules of Civility. I'm probably in the minority, but I liked this novel more than the much beloved [b:A Gentleman in Moscow 34066798 A Gentleman in Moscow Amor Towles https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1711726088l/34066798.SY75.jpg 45743836] because Towles takes off his rose-colored glasses long enough to acknowledge the existence of working class and even poor people. He portrays a vivid New York City during the course of 1938, when the Depression was starting to lift, war was looming in Europe, and WASPs were ascendant. Towles' writing is so sharp that I can (just barely) overlook the fact that the MC, Katey Kontent (accent on the second syllable please), never sounds or behaves like a real human female. A few of my highlighted passages: “I turned to find a woman in her midforties in a skirt suit and glasses standing at a respectful distance. She had lovely red hair tied back in a ponytail. It gave her the appearance of a starlet playing the role of a spinster.““Whenever [the winter wind] blew, it always made my father a little nostalgic for Russia. He'd break out the samovar and boil black tea and recall some December when there was a lull in conscription and the well wasn't frozen and the harvest hadn't failed. It wouldn't be such a bad place to be born, he'd say, if you never had to live there.“I tend to avoid novels by straight white men because f*ck the patriarchy, but I'll make an exception for Amor Towles.