49 | "A Gentleman in Moscow" by Amor Towles | * * * * *|

When I finished the last thing by Amor Towles ("The Lincoln Highway"), I wrote a glowing review here and inserted a card in Garzon's shelf copy proclaiming it "The best work of American fiction I've read in a decade."

I'll need to pull that card and move it to "A Gentleman in Moscow."

There are not enough superlatives in the English language for me to attach to this book, so let me simply say something that those who know me well will understand: This book is at least as good as "A Prayer for Owen Meany," and it's possible I will decide it's better after some time to reflect.

The short plot summary: Count Alexander Rostov, refined gadabout playboy without a care in the world, finds himself Un-Personed at the outset of the Soviet Revolution. Somehow, the early Soviet regime's lack of the full-throated bloodlust that would come later, coupled with nostalgic respect for his station and reputation as a dallying poet on the periphery of socialist ideals, combines to save his life. Instead of execution, he is told he will be confined to Moscow's Hotel Metropol for the remainder of his life; stepping off the premises would bring sure death.

And that's all I want to tell you, because I refuse to step on the story's toes any further. Suffice it to say that, without ever leaving the hotel (mostly), Rostov is able to create a world wider than one would imagine and more beautiful than any man has a right to deserve. Which is sort of the point. No one could deserve the life Rostov enjoys — and the book is suffused throughout with his optimism and gratitude at the simple fact that life (and the characters that inhabit it alongside him) exists, even when political, economic, and moral forces seem hell-bent on squeezing it out of existence.

The book is unlike any I've ever read set in Soviet Russia. To be precise, Soviet Russia is never really mentioned explicitly. Of course, there are references to privation and execution and oppression — but nearly all of that occurs in the background, almost as Shakespearean asides. The point (at least as it seems to me) is that life and joy are inevitable, and all the machinations of evil men have no more power to destroy them than a mosquito could stop an outdoor wedding.

Towles' diction is elegant, delicate, wryly hilarious and soul-suckingly sad in all the right spots. It's as though a symphony turned into sentences. Read this book.