Towles’ New York is not the gritty, steamy one of Philip Roth or Martin Amis (in Money) - it is much more the society New York of Edith Wharton, perhaps closest of all to the New York of Truman Capote in Breakfast at Tiffany’s or Answered Prayers. Rules of Civility, his first book, does deserve a place in the ranks of “New York novels”, however - and for this reader, a prominent one. He was born and raised just outside Boston, graduated from Yale and Stanford and is the principal in a Manhattan investment firm - no Iowa cornfields in that CV. I’m partial to those novels - there’s nothing better for a cold winter day than settling in with a book that brings back to life the locale of past vacations or explorations, even if the timing of the book is decades before my visits.Īuthor Amor Towles doesn’t quite fit that model completely. And many of those writers who become successful choose to write an homage that attempts to capture their version of city of their dreams.įor readers who have had the chance to visit those cities, however infrequently, that means there is a body of literature, set across the decades if not centuries, that portrays the London or New York or Paris that we know only from our travels.

Towles with some of the great themes of love and class, luck and fated encounters that animated Wharton's novels.' - Chicago Tribune.Purchased at Indigo.caThere are a few cities in the world - London, Paris and New York come readily to mind - that serve as never-waning magnets in their power to attract certain types of aspiring writers who grew up in the hinterlands, be those hinterlands the Prairies of Canada, cornfields of Iowa or dales of Yorkshire. 'With this snappy period piece, Towles resurrects the cinematic black-and-white Manhattan of the golden age.' - The New York Times Book Review. 'In the crisp, noirish prose of the era, Towles portrays complex relationships in a city that is at once melting pot and elitist enclave - and a thoroughly modern heroine who fearlessly claims her place in it.' - O, The Oprah magazine. This chance encounter and its startling consequences propel her on a yearlong journey toward the upper echelons of New York society - where she will have little to rely upon other than a bracing wit and her own brand of cool nerve.' - from the rear outer cover.

'On the last night of 1937, twenty-five-year-old Katey Kontent is in a second-rate Greenwich Village jazz bar when Tinker Grey, a handsome banker, happens to sit at the neighboring table. Includes Praise for Rules of Civility About the Author Author Dedication Preliminary Page Quote from Matthew 22:8-14 Preface Epilogue: Few Are Chosen Appendix: The Young George Washington's Rules of Civility & Decent Behaviour in Company and Conversation and Acknowledgments. Fine unread condition photographic softcover wraps.

Rules of civility author