Here's the book: Rules of Civility. My friend, to whom I lend many books, insisted that I read her copy, because she liked it so much. My books are always returned in the same condition they go out to her, even the old, yellowed paperback mysteries, which she is now reading, as she finds my choices of fiction not cheery enough.
One evening, as I read the very first book that I ever borrowed from my friend, I spilled half a glass of wine on it...my one and only glass of wine, I hasten to add, which I did not even get to finish. I take care of books, my own and especially those that belong to others, but the book is ruined, though not for reading, as I went on to finish the story. I will buy another copy to return to my friend.
What about the contents of the book? Spoiler alert! I enjoyed it in a quick-read sort of way. The author, Amor Towles, "is a principal at an investment firm in Manhattan", and this is his first novel. He writes in the voice of the narrator, who is a young woman in her twenties throughout the book, except for fast-forwards in the beginning and end.
The real story begins in the late 1930s, with the young people crashing parties at grand mansions on Long Island, and my first thought was, "Ah, here we are in Gatsby land," and we were, but the author is not Fitzgerald. Towles writes well enough, but, curiously to me, he often uses British spelling and expressions, which perhaps is the way people from the right families and the right schools and universities spoke and wrote in the 1930s. The protagonist, Kate (Katya), who is from an immigrant family in Brooklyn, and did not attend the right schools, works her way up from the secretarial pool to a high-powered job at a glossy magazine and marries a man from the right family, schools, etc. The reviewer at the New York Times, Liesl Schillinger, liked the book better than I did. I once read a good many books of this sort, but time is short, and now when I read, I want to sink my teeth into something more solid.
And now off to order another copy of the book.
