A Gentleman in Moscow captivated me. This is literature. This is good writing. The observations ring true and the witty, engaging dialog make this as engaging as any thriller.
All the action over a span of decades happen within the Metropol Hotel, where Count Alexander Ilyich Rostov is under house arrest for writing the inflammatory poem Where Is It Now?
At the Metropol, Count Rostov maintains the company of his possessions, visits from university friend Mikhail (Mishka) Fyodorovich and screen actress Anna Urbanova, and various hotel denizens, including hotel seamstress Marina, maitre d' of the Boyarsky Andrey and fellow hotel guest & precocious nine-year old Nina Kulikova.
Rounding out the days spent in the Metropol are lively conversations and friendships struck up late at night at the hotel bar Shalyapin.
I rarely re-read books, but plan to re-read A Gentleman in Moscow as I'm sure I will pick up so many more things the second time around. As a movie, I imagine Wes Anderson directing a masterpiece for this story.
Some passages, out of many, that resonated with me:
If one did not master one's circumstances, one was bound to be mastered by them.
...just remember that unlike adults, child want to be happy. So they still have the ability to take the greatest pleasure in the simplest things.
I'll tell you want is convenient. To sleep until noon and have someone bring you your breakfast on a tray. To cancel an appointment at the very last minute. To keep a carriage waiting at the door of one party, so that on a moment's notice it can whisk you away to another. To sidestep marriage in your youth and put off having children altogether. Theses are the greats of conveniences, Anushka - and at one time, I had them all. But in the end, it has been the inconveniences that have matter to me the most.
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