"William Blake famously wrote, "To see a world in a grain of sand,/And heaven in a wild flower,/Hold infinity in the palm of your hand,/and eternity in an hour." This will become Count Alexander Ilyich Rostov's daily challenge and his lifelong campaign, to see the whole world as defined by the confines of a single building, living out his days under house arrest in the glorious and historic Hotel Metropol for the insidious crime of writing a poem. Amor Towles has created a character of supreme intelligence and wit, a man of integrity and honour. A gentleman in the truest sense of the world, whose misfortune it was to have been visited by his muse in the tumultuous times after the Bolshevik Revolution, and so inspired to pen a poem." explorebooks Reviewed by Mark Billingsley.
Count Alexander Ilyich Rostov, is confined to the prison of the luxurious hotel in the centre of Moscow as penance for a crime against the communist state His life reduced to the rooms and characters that make their way to the hotel over the years that he is incarcerated. The storytelling slowly meandering its way out of the corridors of the hotel.
Words used to describe the book:
not for me, overly sentimental, interesting structure, disjointed, disappointed, lovely turn of phrase,
Marks out of 10 between 6 - 8
Next book
Never Mind by Edward St Aubyn
Next Meeting
7 February at 130 Harbord St
