The delight of A Gentleman in Moscow is that it really could be titled A Lady in New York or A Child in the Hut. In theory, any and every person could be this story’s hero for the novel sums up what is quintessentially life: what makes it and what fails to break us.
The story occurs in an unusual setting: the grandest hotel in Moscow post-Bolshevik revolution and fall of the tsars. The main character, Count Alexander Ilyich Rostov, is graciously spared execution due to the committee’s affinity for a rebellious poem Rostov purportedly published in his youth. Instead, he is sentenced to house arrest. As he is currently residing in a suite of rooms at Hotel Metropol – his property presumably already confiscated – this ruling simply orders his transfer to a cramped attic room and the injunction never to step outside the entrance, under penalty of death.
The reader follows Rostov’s stay throughout the next thirty years as Moscow changes around him; indeed, the city is barely recognizable during a brief sojourn outside hotel walls midway his stay. What could occupy an entire book in such a limited setting? The same elements which fill epic novels: love, intrigue, betrayal, ambition, and sorrow.
The key to Towles’ success in conveying Rostov’s odyssey through these rooms is that he refuses to portray Rostov’s life in a smooth, chronological format. There is no suspenseful plot pulling us through the years; rather, we meander through ordinary days selected from various years. What threads all these seemingly random days together is the consistently beautiful and insightful symbolism of little details. A playful game with a child, a conversation with a journalist in the glittering bar, a noting of the remarkable and unique flavorings of a dish in the gilded dining room – all these little events and notes touch upon not only Rostov’s memories and musings but our growing realizations about what comprises our precious and undisguisable humanity. Themes that are lightly alluded to at the beginning of the tale are developed continually with each recounting of a day’s happenings. My favorite chapter, in which thousands of the hotel’s wine bottles have suffered their labels to be removed, filled me with bemused laughter, all the while impressing upon me the tragedy of Rostov’s lost identity and the senseless waste incurred when individuals are lost to the masses.
The story never drags, however. Due to the constant skips in time, balanced with the reappearance of familiar characters and the ever laudable spirits of the count, this episodic re-telling of a man’s life in a period marked by tragedy and sorrow constantly draws the reader deeper into its story and revelations. While the setting is Russian, its author is not, and the book evades the darkness presiding over many Russian tales. Still, those same profound themes that grasp us in the epic Russian novels are presented here, in the hotel’s microcosm of the world. The smallness of the individual in lieu of fate’s relentless pursuit through time, so deeply explored in Tolstoy’s work, is clearly present as Rostov struggles to reconcile his principles with the swift, unprecedented cultural shifts of the 20th century, especially in a communist realm. Yet the comedic moments within this story, such as Rostov’s laughter over the similarity of the city’s gregarious committees with the past parties of flattering aristocrats, smartly remind us that people are still people; the struggles the individual faces, the passions that move him, and the loves that define him will always remain, albeit under different names.
The Count’s nostalgic look at his former life and Russia’s past never reduces to sentimentalism though; further, while we as readers acknowledge the injustice and sorrows that sometimes consume the characters, the story’s ever-present exaltation of life’s small joys keep its light tone aloft, safe from a plunge into bitter despair or a nihilistic realism. As the count learns to find delight in his confinement, we recognize the profundity present in the minute. This story represents all the grandest themes that have been conveyed in the battlefield scene and a martyr’s last speech but demonstrates how they should also be identified in the smallest project between friends and the recognition of goodness in the tasks and people surrounding us.
The story’s final twist could not depict a greater triumph, though it foregoes the smashing escape and overdone dramatic exit. What this novel captures is the inestimable value of life’s tiniest joy and the treasure of each individual. A few years into his extended stay, Rostov decides to embrace the profession of a waiter in his favorite hotel restaurant and it is not only delectable dishes he recommends to his guests; by a dignified tip of his head and sharing of a sentence, he indicates to us the joys we are missing within our day, and how to reclaim our life’s path gone awry.
