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“Rules of Civility” by Amor Towles (Viking, ISBN 9780670022694, $26.95).  

I confess. I judged this book by its cover. In a sophisticated black and white photo, a lovely woman lies on a chaise lounge in a garden while the elegant man seated nearby leans eagerly toward her, both dressed in 1930s evening attire. Mmmm, urbane and deliciously enticing—and a fitting description for this dazzling first novel. 

First, let me say that I’m pretty sure this will be my favorite book of 2011—even though it’s just now August. But it’s a rare work that has me turning back to the first page to begin rereading as soon as I’ve finished the last page. And I’m eagerly anticipating an audio release of this novel so that I can hear it all over again.   

That being said... I’ve had a hard time writing this review. Yes, controlling the gush factor is part of it, but the novel is so seamlessly constructed that it’s difficult for me to extract just one or two parts to hold up as examples of the whole. I decided to try looking online at the actual Walker Evans photographs of late 1930s New York subway passengers, the same photos that comprise the exhibit that our narrator attends in the opening of the book.  And they do capture “a certain naked humanity. Lost in thought, masked by the anonymity of their commute, unaware of the camera that was trained so directly upon them, many of these subjects had unknowingly allowed their inner selves to be seen” (3). Just as these brief glimpses paradoxically reveal the protracted inner lives of Evans’ subjects, so do the bits and pieces of the characters’ lives that the author intersperses throughout the novel give us a deeper, longer-lasting look into their inner selves, the true selves which are hidden behind the gin and jazz veneer of their public personas.    

According to the author, one of the central themes of the novel is how chance meetings and offhand decisions in one’s twenties can define one’s life for decades to come. The daughter of a Russian immigrant, our narrator Katey Kontent (Katya no more) illustrates this theme. A twenty-five year old secretarial pool up-and-comer, Katey’s life intersects with the upper-crust of New York, irrevocably changing her as she discovers the nuances of social strata in late 1930s Manhattan. Her foray into this new world begins on the last night of 1937 as she and her boardinghouse roommate Evelyn Ross welcome in the new year at The Hotspot, a Greenwich Village nightclub well off the beaten path of café society. It is here that they first spot Theodore Grey, aka Tinker. In a description redolent of Fitzgerald’s oft-quoted statement about the rich being “different than you or me,” Katey describes Tinker: “We could tell already that this one was as expensive, as finely made and as clean as his [cashmere] coat. He had that certain confidence in his bearing, that democratic interest in his surroundings, and that understated presumption of friendliness that are only found in young men who have been raised in the company of money and manners. It didn’t occur to people like this that they might be unwelcome in a new environment—and as a result, they rarely were” (18). But appearances can be deceiving, as turns out to be the case with all three of these beautiful young people. 

Even though Eve had declared “dibs” on Tinker when she first spotted him across the nightclub, both young women engage in a friendly competition for his attention, a competition that Katey eventually concedes since Tinker plays by the rules—whether unwritten or written as are the 110 Rules of Civility & Decent Behavior in Company and Conversation copied out by a youthful George Washington and adhered to by Tinker. Here again, one is reminded of Fitzgerald’s Gatsby with his boyhood schedule of improvement. Towels’ crisp, witty dialogue and lyrical descriptions also pay homage to Fitzgerald as in this lovely sentence: “It was a marriage of two minds, of two metropolitan spirits tilting as gently and inescapably toward the future as paper whites tilt toward the sun” (6). 

Besides the similarities to Fitzgerald in both style and theme, allusions to Eliot’s Prufrock, Edith Wharton’s Washington Square, and Charles Dickens’ novels—among many others—abound, along with delightful—and insightful—chapter titles, such as “To Have and Haven’t,” “The Cruelest Month,” and “Where He Lived and What He Lived For,” making the novel an English major’s treat. But in case I’ve given you the wrong impression that this is only a novel for literary types, one that glamorizes the rich and famous, our self-assured and practical narrator Katey can set you straight: “...when a person loses the ability to take pleasure in the mundane…she has put herself in unnecessary danger... One must be prepared to fight for one’s simple pleasures and to defend them against elegance and erudition and all manner of glamorous enticements” (128).   

Let me close by quoting the band REM: “I've said too much/I haven't said enough.” You will just have to read “Rules of Civility” and judge for yourself. Told in Katey’s wry voice, this is a coming-of-age story which explores social class and manners, appearances and realities, ideals and compromises as it tells the story of a thoroughly-modern heroine, one you will admire enormously.   Review by Shirley Wells

Rules of Civility (Hardcover)

By Amor Towles

$26.95

ISBN-13: 9780670022694
Availability: Usually Ships in 1-5 days
Published: Viking Adult, 7/2011

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