Amor Towles’s debut novel Rules of Civility landed on my bookshelves as a result of recommendations from several bloggers. I’d already read — and loved — his later novel A Gentleman in Moscow so I didn’t actually need much persuasion.
Rules of Civility is told from the perspective of Katey Kontent (real name Katya) looking back three decades to 1938 — the year the enigmatic Theodore “Tinker” Grey entered her life. He’s a wealthy banker, sophisticated, expensively dressed and well in with the upper circles of Manhattan life.
Through him Katey and her best friend Eve Ross get to taste life a world away from their cramped apartment and low-paid secretarial jobs. He opens the doors to classy restaurants, luxurious penthouses and champagne-fuelled parties where they meet oddly named people like Dickey, Bitsy and Wyss.
Rules of Civility is a coming-of-age novel in a sense. Katey evolves from a spirited secretary to a woman able to confront the intricacies of love, friendship, and ambition. She discovers who and what to trust and how civility is a often a facade.
The novel’s title comes from a book Katey discovers in Tinker’s apartment containing 110 maxims of good behaviour composed by a young George Washington. His “Rules of Civility & Decent Behaviour in Company and Conversatiton” serve as both compass and counterpoint throughout the narrative, showing how codes of conduct — both written and unwritten — govern the social landscape of Depression-era New York.
They’re meant to be aspirational, a framework for advancement in a civilised society. Yet Towles shows that civility often exists at a superficial level. Individuals can master the outward signifiers — the right clothes, the right address, the right manners — but they fall short of the ideals of civility in their behaviour towards others. Towles suggests that the true measure of character isn’t found in knowing which fork to use, but in the private moments when no one is watching — in how we treat those who can no longer benefit us.
Maybe my expectations were set too high but, as interesting as this theme was, I didn’t have the same level of enjoyment with Rules of Civility as I did with A Gentleman in Moscow. Katey aside (surely it’s impossible to dislike a girl who loves reading), I didn’t engage deeply enough with the characters to much care what happened to them.
The best element of the book by a long way was the way Towles made the city of New York come alive. He captures it in the brief period between the hopelessness of the Depression and the anxieties of World War 2. It’s a city recovering from economic disaster and now throbbing with new possibilities for those willing to seize the opportunities.
For however inhospitable the wind, from this vantage point Manhattan was simply so improbable, so wonderful, so obviously full of promise – that you wanted to approach it for the rest of your life without ever quite arriving.
Towles conveys the essence of this city in a panorama that sweeps from smoke-filled speakeasies; Greenwich Village jazz clubs and Midtown restaurants to clattering typing pools and the calls of news vendors on street corners.
It’s an atmospheric novel for sure but I kept feeling there was something lacking, a certain something that meant I didn’t feel as drawn into the narrative as I hoped to be.
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