Review: A Gentleman in Moscow

A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

From the New York Times bestselling author of Rules of Civility, a novel about a man who is ordered to spend the rest of his life inside a luxury hotel—a beautifully transporting novel.

In 1922, Count Alexander Rostov is deemed an unrepentant aristocrat by a Bolshevik tribunal. He is sentenced to house arrest in the Metropol, a grand hotel across the street from the Kremlin. Rostov, an indomitable man of erudition and wit, has never worked a day in his life, and must now live in an attic room while some of the most tumultuous decades in Russian history are unfolding outside the hotel’s doors. Unexpectedly, his reduced circumstances give him access to a much larger world of emotional discovery.

Brimming with humor, a glittering cast of characters, and one beautifully rendered scene after another, this singular novel casts a spell as it relates the count’s endeavor to gain a deeper understanding of what it means to be a man of purpose.

Review: The Shoe on the Roof

The Shoe on the Roof by Will Ferguson
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

Did not finish this book. It was not my cup of tea at all.

Review: The Man by the Sea

The Man by the Sea by Jack Benton
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

John "Slim" Hardy, heavy drinker and disgraced soldier turned bumbling private detective, is hired to investigate Ted Douglas, an investment banker who slips out of work every Friday to visit a desolate cove on the Lancashire coast. There, he walks to the shore, opens an old book, and begins to read aloud.