Do you recall a time, however brief, when some people, some places and you seem to converge with a sense that something special was happening that could go on and on? And yet, you were so caught up in the effortless unfolding of events that you were unaware of the magic until it was gone.
Amor Towles’ 2011 novel, “Rules of Civility”, is his homage to 1938 Manhattan, its environs and a few youthful inhabitants. It blends sly humor with engaging discovery about each other and themselves. And leaves at least one mystery unsolved.
The story is related through the eyes of a young, scrambling woman in her twenties from Brooklyn’s Brighton Beach starting her career in a Manhattan law firm secretarial pool and living with similar women in Mrs. Martingale’s boardinghouse. It is New Year’s Eve 1937 as Katey Kontent and her roommate, Eve Ross, meet a handsome, affluent-looking, not-for-long stranger at a Greenwich Village jazz club.
They quickly exchange names and his is Theodore Grey, though “My friends call me Tinker.” And Tinker it is for the rest of the tale.
Towles presents a wonderful sense of Manhattan as a feast for excitement and adventure from the Village to Midtown, including the original watering hole of the St. Regis Hotel’s King Cole Room with the fabled Maxfield Parish mural, to uptown apartment suites overlooking Central Park West. And it seems like the Great Gatsby has met the Gold Diggers of 1938.
Events move quickly and the circle of friends and acquaintances swells to include other denizens of Gotham and the tippling affluent described with Art Deco wit: “Slurring is the cursive of speech, I said. Eckshactly, he said.”
And one of my favorite tell-all exchanges captures the initial sense of the story: “I probably shouldn’t tell you this, I said… Kay-Kay, those are my six favorite words in the English language.”
Through the four seasons of 1938 Katey expands her horizons and moves from the world of law to the intense, demanding realm of society magazine publishing for which she seems better suited. And her friends shift their courses, including Tinker for whom Katey will always have a sense of tristesse but no regrets.
The opening ploy is a brilliant use of pictures at a 1966 exhibition Katey and her husband are attending. It is here she sees two black-and-white photographs of Tinker taken at different times with a hidden camera. And the door opens to her memories, which we come to share.
“The Rules of Civility” is sunlight on moving water, glistening at first, then, the sun moves on and we are left to savor a fading glimmer.
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Rules Of Civility (Thorndike Reviewers' Choice) Hardcover – Large Print, December 2, 2011
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Amor Towles
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Amor Towles
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A sophisticated and entertaining debut novel about an irresistible young woman with an uncommon sense of purpose.
Set in New York City in 1938, "Rules of Civility" tells the story of a watershed year in the life of an uncompromising twenty-five-year- old named Katey Kontent. Armed with little more than a formidable intellect, a bracing wit, and her own brand of cool nerve, Katey embarks on a journey from a Wall Street secretarial pool through the upper echelons of New York society in search of a brighter future.
The story opens on New Year's Eve in a Greenwich Village jazz bar, where Katey and her boardinghouse roommate Eve happen to meet Tinker Grey, a handsome banker with royal blue eyes and a ready smile. This chance encounter and its startling consequences cast Katey off her current course, but end up providing her unexpected access to the rarified offices of Conde Nast and a glittering new social circle. Befriended in turn by a shy, principled multimillionaire, an Upper East Side ne'er-do-well, and a single-minded widow who is ahead of her times, Katey has the chance to experience first hand the poise secured by wealth and station, but also the aspirations, envy, disloyalty, and desires that reside just below the surface. Even as she waits for circumstances to bring Tinker back into her orbit, she will learn how individual choices become the means by which life crystallizes loss.
Elegant and captivating, "Rules of Civility" turns a Jamesian eye on how spur of the moment decisions define life for decades to come. A love letter to a great American city at the end of the Depression, readers will quickly fall under its spell of crisp writing, sparkling atmosphere and breathtaking revelations, as Towles evokes the ghosts of Fitzgerald, Capote, and McCarthy. NOTE: Please note that this is a large print book and also it is without a jacket.
Set in New York City in 1938, "Rules of Civility" tells the story of a watershed year in the life of an uncompromising twenty-five-year- old named Katey Kontent. Armed with little more than a formidable intellect, a bracing wit, and her own brand of cool nerve, Katey embarks on a journey from a Wall Street secretarial pool through the upper echelons of New York society in search of a brighter future.
The story opens on New Year's Eve in a Greenwich Village jazz bar, where Katey and her boardinghouse roommate Eve happen to meet Tinker Grey, a handsome banker with royal blue eyes and a ready smile. This chance encounter and its startling consequences cast Katey off her current course, but end up providing her unexpected access to the rarified offices of Conde Nast and a glittering new social circle. Befriended in turn by a shy, principled multimillionaire, an Upper East Side ne'er-do-well, and a single-minded widow who is ahead of her times, Katey has the chance to experience first hand the poise secured by wealth and station, but also the aspirations, envy, disloyalty, and desires that reside just below the surface. Even as she waits for circumstances to bring Tinker back into her orbit, she will learn how individual choices become the means by which life crystallizes loss.
Elegant and captivating, "Rules of Civility" turns a Jamesian eye on how spur of the moment decisions define life for decades to come. A love letter to a great American city at the end of the Depression, readers will quickly fall under its spell of crisp writing, sparkling atmosphere and breathtaking revelations, as Towles evokes the ghosts of Fitzgerald, Capote, and McCarthy. NOTE: Please note that this is a large print book and also it is without a jacket.
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Print length369 pages
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LanguageEnglish
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PublisherThorndike Press
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Publication dateDecember 2, 2011
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Dimensions5.75 x 1 x 8.75 inches
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ISBN-109781410443243
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ISBN-13978-1410443243
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Reviewed in the United States on July 9, 2018
Amor Towles’ 2011 novel, “Rules of Civility”, is his homage to 1938 Manhattan, its environs and a few youthful inhabitants. It blends sly humor with engaging discovery about each other and themselves. And leaves at least one mystery unsolved.
The story is related through the eyes of a young, scrambling woman in her twenties from Brooklyn’s Brighton Beach starting her career in a Manhattan law firm secretarial pool and living with similar women in Mrs. Martingale’s boardinghouse. It is New Year’s Eve 1937 as Katey Kontent and her roommate, Eve Ross, meet a handsome, affluent-looking, not-for-long stranger at a Greenwich Village jazz club.
They quickly exchange names and his is Theodore Grey, though “My friends call me Tinker.” And Tinker it is for the rest of the tale.
Towles presents a wonderful sense of Manhattan as a feast for excitement and adventure from the Village to Midtown, including the original watering hole of the St. Regis Hotel’s King Cole Room with the fabled Maxfield Parish mural, to uptown apartment suites overlooking Central Park West. And it seems like the Great Gatsby has met the Gold Diggers of 1938.
Events move quickly and the circle of friends and acquaintances swells to include other denizens of Gotham and the tippling affluent described with Art Deco wit: “Slurring is the cursive of speech, I said. Eckshactly, he said.”
And one of my favorite tell-all exchanges captures the initial sense of the story: “I probably shouldn’t tell you this, I said… Kay-Kay, those are my six favorite words in the English language.”
Through the four seasons of 1938 Katey expands her horizons and moves from the world of law to the intense, demanding realm of society magazine publishing for which she seems better suited. And her friends shift their courses, including Tinker for whom Katey will always have a sense of tristesse but no regrets.
The opening ploy is a brilliant use of pictures at a 1966 exhibition Katey and her husband are attending. It is here she sees two black-and-white photographs of Tinker taken at different times with a hidden camera. And the door opens to her memories, which we come to share.
“The Rules of Civility” is sunlight on moving water, glistening at first, then, the sun moves on and we are left to savor a fading glimmer.
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5.0 out of 5 stars
The Moment When All Is Possible
By Matt Mansfield on July 9, 2018
Do you recall a time, however brief, when some people, some places and you seem to converge with a sense that something special was happening that could go on and on? And yet, you were so caught up in the effortless unfolding of events that you were unaware of the magic until it was gone.By Matt Mansfield on July 9, 2018
Amor Towles’ 2011 novel, “Rules of Civility”, is his homage to 1938 Manhattan, its environs and a few youthful inhabitants. It blends sly humor with engaging discovery about each other and themselves. And leaves at least one mystery unsolved.
The story is related through the eyes of a young, scrambling woman in her twenties from Brooklyn’s Brighton Beach starting her career in a Manhattan law firm secretarial pool and living with similar women in Mrs. Martingale’s boardinghouse. It is New Year’s Eve 1937 as Katey Kontent and her roommate, Eve Ross, meet a handsome, affluent-looking, not-for-long stranger at a Greenwich Village jazz club.
They quickly exchange names and his is Theodore Grey, though “My friends call me Tinker.” And Tinker it is for the rest of the tale.
Towles presents a wonderful sense of Manhattan as a feast for excitement and adventure from the Village to Midtown, including the original watering hole of the St. Regis Hotel’s King Cole Room with the fabled Maxfield Parish mural, to uptown apartment suites overlooking Central Park West. And it seems like the Great Gatsby has met the Gold Diggers of 1938.
Events move quickly and the circle of friends and acquaintances swells to include other denizens of Gotham and the tippling affluent described with Art Deco wit: “Slurring is the cursive of speech, I said. Eckshactly, he said.”
And one of my favorite tell-all exchanges captures the initial sense of the story: “I probably shouldn’t tell you this, I said… Kay-Kay, those are my six favorite words in the English language.”
Through the four seasons of 1938 Katey expands her horizons and moves from the world of law to the intense, demanding realm of society magazine publishing for which she seems better suited. And her friends shift their courses, including Tinker for whom Katey will always have a sense of tristesse but no regrets.
The opening ploy is a brilliant use of pictures at a 1966 exhibition Katey and her husband are attending. It is here she sees two black-and-white photographs of Tinker taken at different times with a hidden camera. And the door opens to her memories, which we come to share.
“The Rules of Civility” is sunlight on moving water, glistening at first, then, the sun moves on and we are left to savor a fading glimmer.
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Reviewed in the United States on May 6, 2018
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Rules of Civility (2011) is set over one year in America in 1938, during the Great Depression and after the 1937 Recession.
On the last night of 1937, poor 25-year-old Katherine (Katey) Kontent, and her friend Eve Ross, meet rich Theodore (Tinker) Grey, a handsome banker, at the Hotspot jazz club. Katey, the philosophical bookworm, has competition for Tinker Grey – the energetic, beautiful Eve Ross. Just as Tinker is getting closer to Katey, he becomes even more attracted to Eve after a car crash, fueled by his own guilt at causing the accident. Katey becomes ‘Waity Katey’ as she waits for circumstances to bring Tinker back into her life.
Narrated by Katey, she describes her year-long adventures from a Wall Street typist to the upper echelons of New York society and Conde Nast, the magazine company, while Eve Ross is regularly travelling abroad for luxury holidays with Tinker. The male author, Amor Towles, is writing this ‘wanna-be-loved’ story from a female perspective, yet it works. Reminiscent of the 1973 movie, The Way We Were (Robert Redford as Hubbell Gardiner and Barbra Streisand as Katie Morosky), the themes of class difference, societal expectations, memories and regrets, and being true to yourself, continue throughout the novel.
Rules of Civility is the author’s first book, and although it is superbly written, his third book, A Gentleman in Moscow (2016), is the one worthy of 5 stars. This novel is less riveting, with a more circumspect plotline, but no less beautiful and poetic in its writing.
On the last night of 1937, poor 25-year-old Katherine (Katey) Kontent, and her friend Eve Ross, meet rich Theodore (Tinker) Grey, a handsome banker, at the Hotspot jazz club. Katey, the philosophical bookworm, has competition for Tinker Grey – the energetic, beautiful Eve Ross. Just as Tinker is getting closer to Katey, he becomes even more attracted to Eve after a car crash, fueled by his own guilt at causing the accident. Katey becomes ‘Waity Katey’ as she waits for circumstances to bring Tinker back into her life.
Narrated by Katey, she describes her year-long adventures from a Wall Street typist to the upper echelons of New York society and Conde Nast, the magazine company, while Eve Ross is regularly travelling abroad for luxury holidays with Tinker. The male author, Amor Towles, is writing this ‘wanna-be-loved’ story from a female perspective, yet it works. Reminiscent of the 1973 movie, The Way We Were (Robert Redford as Hubbell Gardiner and Barbra Streisand as Katie Morosky), the themes of class difference, societal expectations, memories and regrets, and being true to yourself, continue throughout the novel.
Rules of Civility is the author’s first book, and although it is superbly written, his third book, A Gentleman in Moscow (2016), is the one worthy of 5 stars. This novel is less riveting, with a more circumspect plotline, but no less beautiful and poetic in its writing.
84 people found this helpful
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Reviewed in the United States on April 29, 2017
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All praise to Towles: he writes just the way he wants to. He allows words to do amazing feats and thoughts to live just as they are. What a joy, what a provocative joy. I still have 19% to go on my Kindle, but I just had to stop to savor. It's one of those books which makes you feel you will never find a more suitable one for you. It fits (me) just right. It allows me to be free to write as I want to write. It's Katey's life: she gets to lead it.
I had just finished "A Gentleman in Moscow." I thought well for something almost as good I'll move to Towles' first book. Now I don't know which one is better. They are both better. Better. Betterer. Bettest. She thrust the key down into her pants, my goodness!
I had just finished "A Gentleman in Moscow." I thought well for something almost as good I'll move to Towles' first book. Now I don't know which one is better. They are both better. Better. Betterer. Bettest. She thrust the key down into her pants, my goodness!
102 people found this helpful
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Reviewed in the United States on June 28, 2018
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This book was laughably bad. The author's attempt to tell us about early 20th Century New York full of silver Bentleys and beautiful rich people arguing in club rooms about how to make a gin fizz is laughable. It's as if I wanted to write a book about slaves living on a plantation and I did my research by watching Shirley Temple movies or Gone With the Wind. I don't know nothing about birthing no babies. Seriously? I no more believed (or cared about) a single character or any one of the lines coming from their mouths than I believe a Hallmark TV movie or an afternoon soap opera. If you want to see this world recreated with pure genius read The Great Gatsby. Fitzgerald didn't have to fill his book with cliches. The characters were real and they suffered IN that world which was their and Fitzgerald knew it. His world was NOT the star. But so many people loved this book. Yikes.
48 people found this helpful
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Reviewed in the United States on February 8, 2018
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I just finished , A Gentleman from Moscow. It does not seem possible the same man wrote this book. The narration was dreadful, I stopped listening after half an hour.
One should never assume anything, but, after reading the other book, one expected a similar form of writing. It was not so. His narrator in the other book was fabulous. I could not wait to shut this off. Had I read this one first, I never would have bought, A Gentleman in Moscow, which is a superb book.
One should never assume anything, but, after reading the other book, one expected a similar form of writing. It was not so. His narrator in the other book was fabulous. I could not wait to shut this off. Had I read this one first, I never would have bought, A Gentleman in Moscow, which is a superb book.
50 people found this helpful
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JJ
5.0 out of 5 stars
A touching tale that is beautifully written
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on December 13, 2017Verified Purchase
After reading “A Gentleman in Moscow”, which I thoroughly enjoyed, I sought out other works by Amor Towles.
“Rules of Civility” like his other work is beautifully written and draws you into the epoch with engaging characters that you create a connection with.
Overall I enjoyed “A Gentleman in Moscow” more. Indeed I’d rate it as one of my favourite novels alongside William Boyd’s “Any Human Heart”. However this is a cracking read and highly recommended.
I look forward to reading future works by this talented storyteller.
“Rules of Civility” like his other work is beautifully written and draws you into the epoch with engaging characters that you create a connection with.
Overall I enjoyed “A Gentleman in Moscow” more. Indeed I’d rate it as one of my favourite novels alongside William Boyd’s “Any Human Heart”. However this is a cracking read and highly recommended.
I look forward to reading future works by this talented storyteller.
54 people found this helpful
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Pablo
1.0 out of 5 stars
right when he said that "everyone has one good novel in them
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on June 23, 2018Verified Purchase
Over written, grotesquely improbable and without any discernible merit. This was a shock - having read "A Gentleman In Moscow' I looked forward to this book. It was frightful. The characters were utterly implausible - not least the lead femal character whose inner musings have the authors male thumb print all over them. This is not to say that the male characters are three dimensional. They are non-dimensional as they exist in no universe known currently to man or to science. Could this have been written when the author was fourteen (if not chronologically, then emotionally)? It has made me doubt my own judgement about 'A Gentleman In Moscow'. The late publisher, Gilbert Cunningham, was, in this case, right when he said that "everyone has one good novel in them; having written it they should destroy everything that precedes it and put down their pen forever". Amen.
26 people found this helpful
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Tony Anderson
5.0 out of 5 stars
A wonderful surprise
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on June 11, 2019Verified Purchase
I must admit, when I started this book, I'd forgotten why I'd bought it, or how it had been recommended to me. Didn't matter. It was brilliant. So much so, I found myself rationing the time spent reading it. The writing is superb - almost as if I'd tasted fine wine - and thus certainly to be savoured. The plot is well structured, and the characters well-drawn, although none were terribly appealing people. That's usually important for me - I do pretty much have to like the main figures in a novel - but for once, it didn't matter. Partly because we have, at last, an authentically-depicted strong female at the centre of the narrative. The setting is also very realistic - New York in the 1930s beautifully evoked. And yes, I was desperate for a Martini!
11 people found this helpful
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Graham Eason
2.0 out of 5 stars
Aims for target. Misses.
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on July 31, 2018Verified Purchase
I've struggled through this book with no clearer idea what it's about or why. I came to it via Gentleman of Moscow, which I absolutely loved. This earlier book couldn't be more different. The main character lacks depth and definition, despite both being central to the story's believability. So you're left feeling bewildered by events and with a sense that the plot - such as it is - crashes gears rather than smoothly proceeds. The main character feels like a cypher onto which the author sticks and hangs ideas and storylines.
Apart from the mechanics of plot and character, the writing, as with the later book, is beautiful - stylish, descriptive and fresh. That kept me reading. But ultimately the holes in the book - character, plot, structure - left me feeling very disappointed.
Apart from the mechanics of plot and character, the writing, as with the later book, is beautiful - stylish, descriptive and fresh. That kept me reading. But ultimately the holes in the book - character, plot, structure - left me feeling very disappointed.
14 people found this helpful
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Elizabeth Ducie
5.0 out of 5 stars
Katey Tells Her Story Among Others
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on June 5, 2018Verified Purchase
I read Rules of Civility after discovering Amor Towles via A Gentleman in Moscow. While this story does not have the same depth as AGIM, it is beautifully written, especially considering it was his debut novel. There are hints of The Great Gatsby in the more shallow characters and in the fact that not everyone is who they appear to be. Katey Kontent is a wonderful narrator and by telling other people's stories, she also gives us hers. There are some wonderful throw-away lines; I loved the one about the dog and the train. I read this book during at long two-day journey and it helped the time pass quickly and easily. A great read, highly recommended.
5 people found this helpful
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