Name: JC's review of Rules of Civility by Amor Towles
Item: Rules of Civility
Rating: 4
Author: JC

Amor Towles

A Novel

Rules of Civility

Erik Moe

A chance encounter with a handsome banker in a Greenwich Village jazz bar on New Year's Eve 1938 catapults witty Wall Street secretary Katey Kontent into the upper echelons of New York society, where she befriends a shy multi-millionaire, an Upper East Side ne'er-do-well and a single-minded widow. A first novel. Reprint.

📖 𝑹𝒖𝒍𝒆𝒔 𝑶𝒇 𝑪𝒊𝒗𝒊𝒍𝒊𝒕𝒚: 𝑹𝒆𝒗𝒊𝒆𝒘 📖

Straight off the bat I desperately wanted to give this book a full marks review, but in relation to what has been my favourite read of the year so far (A Gentleman In Moscow) it didn’t quite leave me with the same feelings. Don’t get me wrong, I absolutely loved the characters, the setting, the subject matter and the era the book was set. I adored the writing and the fact that once again Amor Towles has made it so easy for the reader to drop themselves into the main characters shoes. ‘Rules Of Civility’ finds itself meandering at times, I found myself wanting it to become a sort of St Elmo’s Fire set in the 1930’s, and was teased at it a few times but never quite delivered. I found the romantic elements of the book quite satisfying and the conclusion of said romance was wrapped up well.

As usual I don’t want to go through plot too much as if you’re wanting to read this it’d be rude to receive any spoilers. I’ve seen a few scathing reviews of the book on Goodreads stating things like, “a woman should have written this, but a woman would never write it” but I honestly disagree, as said previously I think Amor Towles writes the woman’s perspective really well.

📖 𝑹𝒖𝒍𝒆𝒔 𝑶𝒇 𝑪𝒊𝒗𝒊𝒍𝒊𝒕𝒚: 𝑹𝒆𝒗𝒊𝒆𝒘 📖

Straight off the bat I desperately wanted to give this book a full marks review, but in relation to what has been my favourite read of the year so far (A Gentleman In Moscow) it didn’t quite leave me with the same feelings. Don’t get me wrong, I absolutely loved the characters, the setting, the subject matter and the era the book was set. I adored the writing and the fact that once again Amor Towles has made it so easy for the reader to drop themselves into the main characters shoes. ‘Rules Of Civility’ finds itself meandering at times, I found myself wanting it to become a sort of St Elmo’s Fire set in the 1930’s, and was teased at it a few times but never quite delivered. I found the romantic elements of the book quite satisfying and the conclusion of said romance was wrapped up well.

As usual I don’t want to go through plot too much as if you’re wanting to read this it’d be rude to receive any spoilers. I’ve seen a few scathing reviews of the book on Goodreads stating things like, “a woman should have written this, but a woman would never write it” but I honestly disagree, as said previously I think Amor Towles writes the woman’s perspective really well.

Overall: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

momo-reads

Social climbing white woman marries rich white man.  Written by a privileged man.  Full of phrases like:
"a mournful giant with skin as black as motor oil"
"she must have double back, like a Cherokee scout"
"They would have learned how to walk like a geisha"
"she found a fifth of whiskey in a cabinet and Irished her cup"
"she held it out to me like an Indian chief"

THE UNFORGETTABLE DEBUT BY THE MILLION-COPY BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF A GENTLEMAN IN MOSCOW 'Terrific. A smart, witty, charming dry-martini of a novel' David Nicholls, author of One Day 'Achingly stylish . . . witty, slick production, replete with dark intrigue, period details, and a suitably Katharine Hepburn-like heroine' Guardian 'If the unthinkable happened and I could never read another new work of fiction . . . I'd simply re-read this sparkling, stylish book, with yet another round of martinis as dry as the author's wit' Herald In a jazz bar on the last night of 1937, watching a quartet because she couldn't afford to see the whole ensemble, there were certain things Katey Kontent knew: the location of every old church in Manhattan how to sneak into the cinema how to type eighty words a minute, five thousand an hour, and nine million a year and that if you can still lose yourself in a Dickens novel then everything is going to be fine. By the end of the year she'd learned: how to live like a redhead and insist upon the very best; that riches can turn to rags in the trip of a heartbeat, chance encounters can be fated, and the word 'yes' can be a poison. That's how quickly New York City comes about, like a weathervane, or the head of a cobra. Time tells which. 'A love letter to the city and the era . . . Towles creates a narrative that sparkles with sentences so beautiful you'll stop and re-read them. A delicious and memorable novel that will leave you wistful - and desperate for a martini' Stylist

The stunning debut by the million-copy bestselling author of A Gentleman in Moscow

Jessica Ford

More like 3.5 stars. I liked the story but I’m not a fan of very descriptive writing; I skipped pages at a time. There were so many colorful characters. I couldn’t help but love Katey and Eve, and even Tinker too. I don’t think I’d read another book by this author.

Trish

❝ After meeting someone by chance and throwing off a few sparks, can there be any substance to the feeling that you've known each other your whole lives? After those first few hours of conversation, can you really be sure that your connection is so uncommon that it belongs outside the bounds of time and convention? And if so, won't that someone have just as much capacity to upend as to perfect all your hours that follow? ❞

——

As a law student who had to leave her life in NY behind unexpectedly amid a pandemic, this book was the best comfort read of the year. 

Rules of Civility, Towles’s debut novel, is wonderfully atmospheric and transports you to another time and place in the way all great novels do. Here, it’s NYC in 1938 - all around Americans recovering from the depression and trying to bring a little glitz and glamour back into daily life, still blissfully ignorant of the future hardships the US’s involvement in WWII holds in store for them. 

This novel is romantic, a love letter to a particular time and place in history and the people who made it come alive with the choices they made every day. 

It’s also a book for book lovers. Katey, the novel’s narrator, is a bibliophile and what I love most is that she has RANGE. She unashamedly expresses her appreciation for the likes of Thoreau and Dickens and later Agatha Christie. 

I might sound a little silly, raving about the debut novel of an author whose second novel has already topped all the bestseller lists for months. Look, I’ve heard of A Gentleman in Moscow, seen it on shelves, but for one reason or another, it was never high on my radar.

If Penguin hadn’t surprised me with this #gifted book I probably would’ve skated into 2022 without awakening my love for Amor Towles - and what a grave tragedy that would’ve been. 

The Lincoln Highway comes out Oct 5 and I cannot wait for it! It’s officially my most anticipated book of fall 2021.

Siya S

3.5 stars rounded up to 4 (seriously, Goodreads should grant us the grace of a half-star option already!)

I've been such a long-time fan of Amor Towles. I love A Gentleman in Moscow - so vivid, lighthearted, and incredibly clever. And The Lincoln Highway ended up of my favourites from last year. His first book, Rules of Civility has been on my radar for years but I hadn't had a chance to read it, until now. 

If The Great Gatsby was direct by Woody Allen, it would be something along the line of this book. 



Part romance, part social-climbing drama, the book focused on a bookish spitfire heroine Katey Kontent (I find her name utterly ridiculous, sorry) and how life has played her upside down during the year 1938. Life brought her a chance of a lifetime in the form of Tinker Grey, a young wealthy banker, a type of certain someone who could elevate her up the social ladder to the very top floor. 



I mean, it's mostly a rich people drama, which I don't particularly care about or fond of. BUT I liked anything jazz-related, and while this one wasn't actually about jazz it was set in the 1930s when jazz was at the top of its game. With that regard (at least), Towles could deliver, because his vivid description of the atmospheric elements and nuance could bring 1930s NYC to life. So, kudos to him. 



Unfortunately, I find some of the dialogues a little too confusing, the humor landed a little flat, and the characters on a rather wrong end of development. I stayed with Katey from page one until the very end, and for the life of me, I still couldn't decide what kind of a person she was - what's her ghost? her motive? what grinds her gears? where did she get that integrity? where did she get the money to have fun around town in the first place? 

I think this was a great debut work, and I'm glad to see his craft has been neatly developed over the years.

Sandi King

Abandoned after 40%. I just can't take it anymore. It's witty, sparkly writing, but about nothing. I don't care about anyone yet at almost halfway through. Life's too short to finish books that don't engage you.

taryn a.

i put off reading rules of civility for years, partially because it was a gold-stickered pick at the front of a major bookseller i used to work at (and subsequently pitted against my needlessly contrarian reading habits), and partially because despite a setting i loved, i found the premise a little dull. this was all a strep miscalculation on my part. i feel like it reads like whatever the winter version of a beach read is — something meant to be curled up with on long dreary days. definitely a fitzgerald/wharton for the modern set. i found the protagonist a little dull in that her personality was just-slightly too meandering (we contain multitudes, sure, but refine it a little bit), but i fully intend on picking up another towles novel when the cold drifts in

alina s

Towles does not pass the vibe check with this one. Romanizing poverty? Check
Reinforcing the idea that if you work hard enough, you can one day be rich? Check 
Trying to make rich people seem chill? Check
Saying “Negroes” a lot when it’s not necessary? Check 

But also I’d be lying if I said I didn’t blow through this one because this book is definitely juicy

Alex Q

This book would have been better if it was written by a women. Then again, a woman would never write this book.

Riah Forbes 

Loved it! This is the kind of book I want to re-read immediately because I already miss the characters (and the writing).

Fraser Simons

Most people are high on A Gentlemen in Moscow, a book I thought was fine, but hard to relate to and care about—I now understand the hype around this author a bit more. Everything about this was compelling to me. At a couple key moments our narrator speaks about Autumn in New York, and why it feels so inviting. 

This book feels like it could well be some strange alchemical process that analyzed that song and it’s fundamental components were put into plot beats and voice and character. Katey’s voice is steeped in nostalgia but her lens is untainted by rose coloured glasses. Somehow, whether in love of slighted, or both, it remains removed and non-judgmental. Having sorted the sordid affairs long ago and now, understanding them well enough, can move about the exhibit in a linear fashion, forming a narrative, but still have the remoteness of a tour guide. 

It’s funny how many stories use a conceit like this: the old person with long ages lived naturally throw one particular year in sharp relief. If one confused fiction with life, or read too much perhaps, you might expect to hit a specific age and close your eyes one day and remember some teenage year with eidetic precision. At the cost, presumably, of so many other functions of memory. I probably find stories like this so compelling because my own memory doesn’t function at all like this.

Whatever the drug that is this book is, I’m certainly happy to have taken the trip. I don’t think there was a single dragging moment and Katey could talk about anything at all and I’d be happy. That’s a monumental feat of craftwork as it. But the notion most people have of New York City is both invoked and peeled back to reveal a bit of a wolffish underbelly, when you expected, somehow, an altogether different animal. Sure I knew it was hard to make it there. But it feels like instead, to these characters, all the city does is contrived circumstances in which all their secrets, of which everyone turns on, are exposed for what they are. Rich and poor alike. To the city they’re nothing but a turnstile.

In the way that all the best fiction seems to be, this book is about everything all at once; certainly the city and the times and The War. It’d be easy to say it’s focus is on classism, with Katey transgressing early on into the NYC socialite scene, the act itself being the thing to expose everyone and everything to come. But there is far more about the human condition to be found that this simple cause and effect.

Sarah Ryan

It took me a while to get into this book and I enjoyed the second half more than the first half when there was more character development and less ‘rich people doing rich people things’

Nadine 

If you need one mentor text for students on great descriptive writing, this would be it. Think of the narrative style in Gatsby, the character description in Breakfast at Tiffany’s a touch of remains of the day and more than I can remember and you have an inkling of this. 
Plus a smart woman contextually correct in her time not exaggerated in her feminist thoughts. A very clever book.

Tracey O’Rourke

A little bit of the girl's side of The Great Gatsby, I enjoyed this book quite a bit, yet the story was a little disjointed. An entertaining, but not great, read.

Olivera Mitić

The first fifty pages? Five stars, no doubt. 

And after that? The story just meandered for a while and then, I suppose, it ended, even though I'm not sure there was much of a story for there to be much of an ending at all.

Rachel Briggs

I rediscovered reading this year, and reading more books than ever, I felt like I had to try and step out of my "comfort zone" and read new genres, new authors, and so on. I've read almost no historical fiction this year - until I picked up Rules of Civility. This book felt like coming home.

You know that feeling when you get home after a vacation, and while you had a fantastic time traveling, you are anxious to sleep in your own bed? That is what reading this book felt like for me. Like comfort, like home.

Jeremy Anderberg

This was so good. Elegant, but also playful. Glitzy, but also hardscrabble. Sarcastic, but also tender and earnest. How Towles does it is beyond me. But I do know that I love this man's writing. Katey Content, Evey Ross, Tinker Grey, Wallace Wolcott . . . these characters are going to stay with me a long time. I literally just finished it, so I'm not entirely sure yet, but I think I like it better than AGIM. I read a library copy and enjoyed it so much that I may have to get my own copy.

Catherine Boys

This was definitely an enjoyable read! It is well paced and nicely crafted, but I agree with the criticisms I've read about the flat characters, especially Tinker. All I could think at the end was, "what on earth was so special about that guy?" He wasn't brought to life to the point where I could understand why Katey was so in love with him for so many years...if it was just the "cosmic connection" thing, it wasn't well developed enough to be believable.

Catarina

"But on the following morning, I woke with it on my lips. And so I have on so many mornings since."

Ben Nathan

The writing is great, but I don't know if I cared at all. Interesting often enough though.

Artas Bartas

A few years ago I gave myself the best Christmas present - Amor Towles' book "A Gentleman in Moscow". Reading that book was a phenomenal experience. It was hard to put down and the voice of its main protagonist, Count Alexander Rostov, lingers on in my head until today. I had to wait a whole year before my next encounter with Mr. Towles. For the following Christmas, I picked his debut novel "Rules of Civility". 

"Rules of Civility" is a big city novel told through the eyes of a young woman, Katey Kontent, whose life takes an unexpected turn after a chance encounter with a handsome banker, Tinker Grey. The year is 1937, the place is New York and the cast of this story features an eclectic mix of Wall Street secretaries and bankers, grumbling artists and careless party girls as well as mild-mannered aristocrats and powerful godmothers. Thrown into the upper echelons of New York's society, Katey Kontent relies on her wit and innate intelligence to keep up, while trying to sort out her feelings for the mysterious Tinker Grey. 

The key elements of the book - its cast of emotionally volatile characters, its scenes set in opulent houses and vibrant nightclubs, and its study of people going to extremes to climb the greasy pole of social mobility - invite an inevitable comparison to F. Scott Fitzgerald's "The Great Gatsby". And to be honest, "Rules of Civility" does feel like an attempt to write a Great Gatsby sequel set in somewhat different New York, with the lineup of protagonists rejigged to arrive at a more moralistic finale. 

Amor Towles decided to give Katey Kontent a bookish, introverted personality. Her ideal evening is an evening spent at home, with books. When she is out and about, partying it up with her best friend at an illegal Russian club or enjoying four course meal at a grand residence of some industrialists, she assumes the role of an observer. She waits to be spoken to and follows the lead of whoever happens to be the cheerleader de jour. Obviously, that makes her a much more conventional protagonist.

The animating force of "A Gentleman in Moscow" is Count Alexander Rostov's ability to push people (and the plot) into action by employing charm, humor, and an occasional stratagem. By contrast "Rules of Civility" is not so much a thriller as a clever romance novel. "If we only fell in love with people who were perfect for us, then there wouldn't be so much fuss about love in the first place," notes a character in the book and this comment offers a perfect description of Katey Kontent's relationships. She finds herself attracted to a wrong guy all the while courting the "right" guy for whom she feels maternal rather than erotic feelings. 

Amor Towles does a nice job of evoking the New York City of pre-war years, to the point that even a total outsider like me managed to build a picture of this imaginary place in my head. All in all, it's a great read for a long flight or a weekend at the beach, but I would not include this book in the list of must-read novels just yet.

Erik Moe &
Rules of Civility by Amor Towles

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Erik Moe &Rules of Civility by Amor Towles

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Erik Moe &
Rules of Civility by Amor Towles