Rules of Civility, Amor Towles

Rules of Civility by Amor Towles is by the same author as A Gentleman in Moscow, so I decided to look into it.

Started: 1/11/2020
Completed: 1/14/2020
Recommendation: Highly Recommended
Recommended By: Nobody

Review:

This book feels like literature.  It sort of commands comparisons to other books during the read.  For example, there is a skeet shooting scene in both this book and in Stiletto.  In both, the female protagonist is put off by skeet shooting.  In this book (which is a multi-layered study in a fish-out-of-water theme) the protagonist comes to skeet shooting not through the front door, but by literally walking through bushes.  In Stiletto, the protagonist is presented with her own guns for the purpose of the skeet shoot.  In both books, skeet shooting is used to indicate a sort of male dominance.  In this book, the skeet shooting emphasizes the class differences between the protagonist and her love interest and contrasts the protagonist with another who causes her love interest to blush instantly and is an expert on the range (adding another layer to the protagonist's feeling of displacement).  In Stiletto, the skeet shooting is used as a metaphor for acceptance as the protagonist is extraordinarily good on first attempt.  It indicates a coming of age (symbolically with the guns and being part of society by being included) in Stiletto, but in this book it indicates how far the protagonist is out of her class.  This kind of simple comparison of classic metaphors (in both books) and how the authors use them comes about because of the subtlety in this book as opposed to the heavy handed attempt in Stiletto (the gun metaphor never goes anywhere and the tableau is sort of handed to the reader).  In this book, there comes a time when the protagonist comes in through the front door, but likens her presence back to going through the bushes and ends up out of place in a new and different way.  Later a sheet shooting gun gives the encounter a certain awkward fondness.

This book also conveys the "fish-out-of-water" theme through several different characters who are all out of place (though it is not necessarily obvious moment to moment) in different ways.  There is also a theme of self-destruction running through the characters in the book (one literally goes off to war, another pursues acceptance and having received it rejects it, yet another leaves a job having just gotten a promotion and accepts another job with much less pay, etc.)  By constant undermining themselves (in new and interesting ways), the characters can never find stability (indeed, one character is encouraged to "get out the rut" to his further displacement).

This is a well written book and I recommend it highly.