With this snappy period piece, Towles resurrects the cinematic black-and-white Manhattan of the golden age of screwball comedy, gal-pal camaraderie and romantic mischief (think of Stage Door, Made for Each Other, My Man Godfrey and even Fay Wray in King Kong). With Katey, we travel by cab and watch Broadway ‘slipping by the windows like a string of lights being pulled off a Christmas tree,’ or see limousines idling in front of the 21 Club, smoke spiraling from their tailpipes ‘like genies from a bottle.’ These pages prompt recollections of movie scenes stamped so deeply on the psyche that they feel remembered: elevated trains, Carole Lombard and Jimmy Stewart, smoky jazz clubs and men in fedoras … Towles’s central characters are youthful Americans in tricky times, trying to create authentic lives, even if quasi-pseudonymously. ‘In New York City,’ he writes, ‘these sorts of alterations come free of charge.’
In the first few pages of Rules of Civility, Amor Towles' wonderful debut novel, it's New Year's Eve in Manhattan, with 1938 a few hours away … With this bit of a wink, Towles conveys that he will be playing with some of the great themes of love and class, luck and fated encounters that animated Wharton novels such as The House of Mirth and The Age of Innocence. Towles' central figure, Katey Kontent (a great name) — born Katya to Russian immigrant parents in Brooklyn — travels in and out of America's world of privilege with wit and an eye for irony.
The arc of the narrative is nothing really new: Sharp, working-class daughter of Brooklyn immigrants (25-year-old Katey Kontent) chance-meets a cartoonishly named Brahmin banker (Tinker Grey) at that great democratic equalizer — the jazz bar. Katey quickly climbs into a world where people go to college ‘in Cambridge,’ where summer is a verb — and where, it becomes clear, there's lots of tarnish amid all that monogrammed silver … But it's how Towles shades in the story that's most interesting, elegantly drawing a picture of a time and place seldom depicted in the current culture, when riders gripped straps on the elevated, when vichyssoise and Dover sole were the height of sophistication and when 'drat' and 'dame' were uttered unironically (and charmingly so).
If you want shopping at Bendel's, gin martinis at a debutante's mansion and jazz bands playing until 3am, Rules of Civility has it all and more. If you want something original that doesn't borrow at all from Breakfast at Tiffany's, The Great Gatsby or even Boardwalk Empire, you might be a little disappointed. Me, I lapped it all up … While you're lost in the whirl of silk stockings, furs and hip flasks, all you care about is what Katey Kontent does next.
Amor Towles' stylish, elegant and deliberately anachronistic debut novel transports readers back to Manhattan in 1938, just before the sharp lines between social stratifications were smudged by the leveling influences of World War II and the G.I. Bill … Towles' engaging, plucky narrator, Brooklyn-born Katey Kontent, nee Katya, of Russian immigrant parents, is 25 in 1938. Recently orphaned, she's a bookworm who diligently does her daily laps in the secretarial pool at a downtown law firm, although she's clearly smart enough to make a splash as a lawyer herself … Rules of Civility takes us to Gatsbyesque parties on Long Island estates, jazz dives, lushly appointed Conde Nast offices, luxe suites at The Plaza, posh restaurants with menus ‘like giant playing cards’ and flophouses.
As this brilliantly realized book unfolds, each of the three hurtles toward a particular destiny … Told in Kate’s wry voice, this is a coming-of-age story in which all three characters suffer through a loss of innocence. Kate is a keen observer and while her language reflects the slang of her time – she actually says, ‘Great Caesar’s ghost’ – it is also timeless, as when she labels a romantic rival ‘as sharp as a harpoon and twice as barbed.’ Like this narration, the period details that the author – through Kate – notes are precise and evocative, from the grim secretarial pool to the fireworks over a mansion’s lawn. But they never detract from the characters. Their issues are the eternal ones of identity and self-worth, set in stark relief in a troubled world.
Even the most jaded New Yorker can see the beauty in Amor Towles' Rules of Civility, the antiqued portrait of an unlikely jet set making the most of Manhattan … As fortunes, friendships and reputations burn out and rise from their ash, these New Yorkers reveal their various degrees of moral compromise, and as they change, so too do their perspectives on each other. We come to appreciate anew that ‘when some incident sheds a favorable light on an old and absent friend, that's about as good a gift as chance intends to offer.’
With writing so sharp you could stab your finger on it, Rules of Civility draws the reader into an exploration of love and timing, friendship and betrayal, class and money, all played out among brilliant dialogue and quick plotting … Brilliantly, Towles captures a specific era in pre-war Manhattan, burnished with the universals of youth and promise and the world awaiting. Rules of Civility certainly flashes a Dorothy Parker-ish zip, but what gives it soul is a hovering Fitzgerald-like maturity, at once pensive and poignant.
Amor Towles' sleek debut novel, set in the glittering and gritty New York City of 1938, nods smartly to Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, Dorothy Parker, Henry James, Edith Wharton, Henry Thoreau, James Fenimore Cooper — and borrows its title from George Washington — yet makes something fresh out of those familiar materials. Chief among the novel's influences is Fitzgerald; Rules of Civility is in many ways a riff on The Great Gatsby, complete with a wealthy but elusive hero, an unattainable golden girl and a car crash. And just like Nick Carraway, Towles' narrator, Katey Kontent, becomes as intriguing as the more boldly drawn characters she describes to us … Towles has a lovely way with language and a deft wit, and his characters are that rare thing, both convincing and surprising.
The year is 1938. New York is a place where people can go and reinvent themselves as someone fabulous and leave their old lesser selves behind in lesser places. The narrator is clever, Coney Island-born Katey Kontent, an orphan of a Russian immigrant father, her name pronounced con-tent – as in being happy – who rises from secretary to conquer book and magazine publishing (A quibble: I never bought the name. Too forced) … Clearly, Towles is having great fun diving into the habits of the period, the food, the dress, the rituals. I get the sense that he had as much fun writing the book, celebrating the glories of the time, as the reader does in devouring it.
The book is aptly named. The preface, which takes place in the Museum of Modern Art in 1966, is especially lovely; the civility here seems appropriate, with subtle undertones. Later, back in 1938, we wander into penthouses and parties in the company of seemingly endless numbers of wealthy, educated people with waspy nicknames – Dickey, Bitsy, Tinker, Wyss – as they pursue what appear to be relatively empty but nonetheless very pleasant lives. The book is saved from what could be clichéd performances by these smooth young people through Katey’s witty assessments of their long and short suits, both emotional and sartorial … Katey usually keeps her distance; the characters are more observed than deeply felt. But the tale is engrossing, and Katey herself is interesting and often compelling.
In his smashing debut, Towles details the intriguing life of Katherine Kontent and how her world is upended by the fateful events of 1938. Kate and her roommate, Evelyn Ross, have moved to Manhattan for its culture and the chance to class up their lives with glamour – be it with jazz musicians, trust fund lotharios, or any man with a hint of charm who will pay for dinner and drinks … His first effort is remarkable for its strong narrative, original characters and a voice influenced by Fitzgerald and Capote, but clearly true to itself.
Towles' buzzed-about first novel is an affectionate return to the post–Jazz Age years, and the literary style that grew out of it (though seasoned with expletives). Brooklyn girl Katey Kontent and her boardinghouse mate, Midwestern beauty Eve Ross, are expert flirts who become an instant, inseparable threesome with mysterious young banker Tinker Grey … The characters are beautifully drawn, the dialogue is sharp and Towles avoids the period nostalgia and sentimentality to which a lesser writer might succumb.
Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay[/caption]
