A Gentleman

Books are a common Christmas gift in our family. I have a (rather selfish) habit of spending several hours in a bookstore in the weeks before Christmas browsing books and choosing ones to give to my children. My criteria include hard cover only, usually a novel, and a book that I would like to read myself, if I had the opportunity. Oh, also something I think will be enjoyed by the one I give it to.

This year, I almost bought A Gentleman in Moscow, by Amor Towles, for my son, Drew. In the end, I opted for Magpie Murders instead. Glad I did, as it turns out, since he had already read Towles's book and liked it well enough to get it for me. I'm also glad I didn't buy it for my wife, Dianne, since she had already read and enjoyed the Kindle version for her book club and had told me the plot just a couple of months earlier. This escaped me completely while I was browsing. I would have been embarrassed.

The Gentleman grabbed me on the first page and never let go. Some books I read and think, I could have written that, if only I had thought of the story. It's not true in most cases, but I'm able to read the book and think that. Other books amaze me: there's no way I could have written this or this well. This book was one of those. Yes, I wanted to know what would happen next, but if I got distracted while reading a paragraph I always went back and reread it for the pleasure of tasting every word. (OK, I tend to read that way anyhow, but rarely is a book so delicious.)

Count Rostov, confined for most of his life to a hotel for the crime of being an aristocrat, finds ways to cope. He also accidentally becomes an adoptive parent. But his perspectives on his brave new world are what I found so fascinating, funny, and endearing. Some of his observations I found comforting, some apropos to our own swiftly changing national culture.

A couple of examples I noted.

"The Bolsheviks, who were so intent upon recasting the future from a mold of their own making, would not rest until every last vestige of his Russia had been uprooted, shattered, or erased" (p 144). This is Steve Bannon's quoted goal. The Bolsheviks at least had an ideal of equality. What is Bannon's ideal? I think it stops with the destruction. He has certainly gotten the boulder rolling.

"It is a fact of human life that one must eventually choose a philosophy" (p 146). I have believed and doubted and searched for much of my life. Eventually, I simply chose the philosophy that I had inherited; I chose to believe, without claiming to be absolutely certain, in God and the tenets of my Christian heritage. I now find a large swath of American Christianity hell-bent on ensuring that other spiritual searchers do not make this choice. More destruction.

I only hope I can weather the sea change with half as much grace as the count.