READ THIS: RULES OF CIVILITY A novel by Amor Towles Our Coverage Sponsored by Maine Woolens
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There is no author living or dead that Peachy Deegan loves more than F. Scott Fitzgerald, period. She's read The Great Gatsby more times than any other book and has read everything he's written that she knows exists. That being said, we didn't think anyone would ever come close to his talent. The closest we've ever come with an author today writing prose close to the caliber of Fitzgerald (God) is Amor Towles in Rules of Civility. By the time Peachy reached the end of Rules of Civility, her green highlighter was almost worn out and the pages started to resemble the light at the end of Daisy's dock. This book is a gift to the world of literature and happy days are here again. With every turn of the page, you'll feel like you're opening a present of prose.
Don't let the title fool you into thinking this is only for the 1% or the 47% or however you define the upper echelon-we define upper echelon this way: those with class, intelligence and discriminating taste regardless of annual income or balance sheet. If you're the type that appreciates the singular pleasures of life like paper airplanes, Rules of Civility is for you. Start TINKERING with it. You'll love it till doomsday, with all its highfalutin sentences. Towles dares to use all the right adjectives.
Enter 1936 and we go back in time with Eve at Mrs. Martingale's boardinghouse and marketing at The Pembroke Press, and come on sweet stuff, we absolutely adore the banter and lexicon of the day we segue into on page 38-perhaps that is how the Deegan girls sitting at the bar in the 1940's would have chatted as well but that was so pre-Peachy we're not sure. It takes place in the city we all know and love, described by Towles: "the city glittered like a diamond necklace that knows exactly whom it's within the reach of." (p. 72) We love how whom is employed correctly and we love how page 112 distinguishes Manhattan from New York. We just ate it up when we saw page 244 say: "The Fifth-Avenue high rises shimmered to the envy of the outer boroughs." Check out the musings on page 297 with Atlas vs. St. Pats. The book is reflective for all Manhattanites and educational for those not lucky enough to live here.
The power of description is spot-on consistently. We love how on page 114 Towles makes IRISHED a verb, as in Irishing your cup with whiskey. We quite like most things Irished, as do our tele friends across the pond-Eddy and Patsy, though perhaps they think they English their cup.
Here are some passages Peachy liked in particular:
"But the smell of the snow-wet wool made it seem more authentic. Suddenly, I could picture Tinker on the back of a horse somewhere: at the edge of the treeline under a towering sky...at this college roommate's ranch, perhaps...where they hunted deer with antique rifles and with dogs that were better bred than I." (p. 30)
"The stones were uncontestably glorious and happened to match the color of her eyes. From the way she carried herself, you could just tell that she swam with them. Coming out of the water, she would pick up a towel and dry her hair, not wondering for a moment whether the stones were in her ears or at the bottom of the sea." (p. 51)
And perhaps Peachy's favorite, that she happened to read as she saw a sunset one day:
"As we sat there, dusk was falling and the lights of the city were coming on one by one in ways that even Edison hadn't imagined. They came on across the great patchwork of office buildings and along the cables of the bridges; then it was the street lamps and the theater marquees, the headlights of the cars and the beacons perched atop the radio towers-each individual lumen testifying to some unhesitant intemperate collective aspiration." (p. 300)
You also might learn something:
"...be careful when choosing what you're proud of-because the world has every intention of using it against you." (p. 37)
"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." (p. 128)
"Most people have more needs than wants. That's why they live the lives they do. But the world is run by those whose wants outstrip their needs." (p. 259)
We are not a bit surprised to learn that Amor is a Yalie (one of Peachy's best friends is a Saybrook girl-and if you don't know what that means possibly you don't have friends from Yale) because they are among the most socially adept of the Ivies and prove also to churn out quintessential literary talents. Above educational background, we are also pleased to know that Towles is on Wall Street, and note our 500th post in READ THIS was on Wall Street by another fantastic ex-Wall Streeter....and someone else we know used to work there too, who previously lived in the Back Bay coming from Beantown. Funny how that works-all these good writers working on Wall Street...Amor we think you can leave now because you're going to be a singular sensation in the literary world that is clearly more enjoyable.
Our esteemed panel adds:
I love reading anything about Manhattan especially about a time I was not alive to experience. Having grown up in the city, I know how elitist as well as diverse it can be. Amor Towles give us “Rules of Civility” which made the New York Time Bestseller list. Set in the late 1930’s, with characters of every background and class. By chance a young couple meets who have grown up in different worlds. Follow their lives that although are running parallel could not farther from the same. Great and intelligent writing and I love the insight to city life.
The 1930's happen to be one of my favorite time periods, especially in New York City. I was so excited when I saw the book "Rules of Civility" by Amor Towles and couldn't wait to start reading the book, especially after hearing such wonderful things about it. The story actually begins in 1966 but quickly turns back to 1938, which is the most eventful year in Katey's life. The author truly puts you in the setting of this book because of the descriptive manner in which she writes. You truly feel what it's like to be a woman during that time period! The job opportunities for women were limited and the author visualizes that struggle for the reader. This historical novel is one that compares to a classic, such as The Great Gatsby! Make sure to read this novel as soon as you can! It is a highly enjoyable read!
Rules of Civility by Amor Towles is a fabulous novel that you can not get enough of. A throwback to an era long gone, we find ourselves in Manhattan in the late 1930s, on the brink of war and changing times. We are are introduced to Katey, and all her aspirations as she struggles to become an "it" girl in the city that never sleeps. We meet a slew of likable and not so likable characters that lead us through Katey's adventure called life. A character not to be forgotten in itself, is of course Manhattan. Towels paints such a beautiful picture of the city, with deep details, that one finds themselves following in love with this lead character too. Flash into the future and readers are able to link the missing pieces of the puzzle that Katey left back in her youth. Amor Towles does a fabulous job in Rules of Civility to paint a young woman's life in the city we call home, we know you will enjoy this book just as much as we did.
Whom You Know gives Rules of Civility our Highest Recommendation. Read it and reach literary civilization.
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A New York Times bestseller that hit #1 on the Boston Globe and Los Angeles Times bestseller lists (as well as being a San Francisco Chronicle, Indie Bound and Publishers Weekly bestseller), RULES OF CIVILITY (Penguin; Strict On-Sale Date: June 26, 2012; ISBN: 978-0-14-312116-9; $16.00; 335pp) is a sophisticated and entertaining debut novel by Amor Towles about an irresistible young woman with an uncommon sense of purpose. One of the most successful and most warmly embraced – by critics, readers, and booksellers, alike – first novels to have been published last year, RULES OF CIVLITY “resurrects the cinematic black-and-white Manhattan of the golden age” (The New York Times Book Review).
On New Year’s Eve of 1937 in a Greenwich Village jazz bar, twenty-five year old secretary Katey Kontent and her boardinghouse roommate meet and fall for Tinker Grey, a handsome banker with royal blue eyes and a ready smile. This chance meeting and its startling consequences propel Katey, an uncompromising woman with her own brand of cool nerve, into a yearlong journey through the upper echelons of New York society. Befriended in turn by two men—a shy, principled multimillionaire and an Upper East Side ne’er-do-well—and by a single-minded widow who is ahead of her time, Katey finds herself in a glittering new world where she experiences first hand the comfort, poise, and ease that wealth secures, but also the aspirations, envy, disloyalty, and desire that reside just below its surface.
Elegant and captivating, RULES OF CIVILITY captures how a spur of the moment decision can come to define a lifetime. The novel presents a fresh take on the perennially American story of rising from humble beginnings to great heights—this time with a strong woman in the hero’s role—against the backdrop of New York City as the Great Depression comes to an end. Towles writes with a masterful command of the period: its tones and inflections, its cultural trappings and complex social strata come alive in his prose. RULES OF CIVILITY marks the debut of an original new voice to the fictional landscape.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Born in 1964, Amor Towles was raised in a suburb of Boston, Massachusetts. He graduated from Yale College and received an M.A. in English from Stanford University. He is a principal at an investment firm in Manhattan, where he lives with his wife and two children. Mr. Towles is an ardent fan of early 20th century painting, 1950’s jazz, 1970’s cop shows, rock & roll on vinyl, obsolete accessories, manifestoes, breakfast pastries, pasta, liquor, snow-days, Tuscany, Provence, Disneyland, Hollywood, the cast of Casablanca, 007, Captain Kirk, Bob Dylan (early, mid, and late phases), the wee hours, card games, cafés, and the cookies made by both of his grandmothers. RULES OF CIVILITY is his first novel.
RULES OF CIVILITY by Amor Towles
Penguin ▪ $16.00▪ Strict On Sale June 26, 2012 ▪ ISBN: 978-0-14-312116-9
***also available as an ebook***
Visit Amor Towles online at www.amortowles.com
Please also visit Penguin online at http://us.penguingroup.com
