Rules of Civility by Amor Towles
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This story is about a woman’s life in Manhattan, beginning in the late 1930s, her love life and the man that got away, returned, got away again. Self-discovery and self-invention. The author has said that one of the central themes in the book is how chance meetings and offhand decisions in one’s 20s can define one’s life for decades to come. “This is a flesh-and-blood tale you believe in, with fabulous period detail. It’s all too rare to find a fun, glamorous, semi-literary tale to get lost in,” wrote The New York Times. I enjoyed all of the characters, especially the lead, Katey Kontent, and a time and place that I am interested in. New York in the 1930s.

This is a debut novel for Amor Towles. He gave himself one year to write it. Started on Jan. 1, 2006, finished 365 days later. Two weeks to write and revise an imagined 26 chapters. The book also starts on New Year’s Eve and ends one year later. He then spent three years rewriting and revising. Worth the wait.

“Glittering … filled with snappy dialogue, sharp observations and an array of terrifically drawn characters … Towles writes with grace and verve about the mores and manners of a society on the cusp of radical change.” — NPR

I loved this book. I can’t wait to read another Towles-penned book, “A Gentleman in Moscow.”

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