A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles FIC Tow

This book was highly recommended by a friend.  Put off by its length (462 pages) and small print, I resisted for awhile.  And then I started reading.

In 1922 and at the age of 30, Count Alexander Ilyich Rostov is declared a "Former Person" by a Bolshevik tribunal and sentenced to house arrest in the Metropol Hotel where he currently resides.  Not immediately concerned, he soon finds his living circumstances reduced from the suite he has occupied for years on the third floor to a room of 100 square feet on the fifth floor.

Over the next 30+ years, the Count (as most people continue to call him despite the changes in society going on at the time) comes to terms with his living situation.  Full of grace and good humor he makes friends with those around him - from the chef to the maitre d' to the hotel seamstress who teaches him to sew.  When 9-year-old Nina, a bona fide resident of the hotel, enters his life he finds he has much to learn - not only about the inner workings of the hotel but about himself.

This is just the broad strokes of a fascinating book.  Covering the time from 1922 to 1954 it covers not only the life of one man but also a hotel (the Metropol is a real hotel in Moscow) as well as the development of a country under Communism.  On the surface it might sound boring but it is far from it.  And the last forty pages are 'edge of your seat, knuckle clutching, sweat inducing' reading.

I loved this book and hated to see it end.

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