Library Director’s Notebook
November , 2012
It has always interested me that during some of the worst years of the Great Depression many of the most popular movies were set in fancy nightclubs, swank restaurants, penthouses, and mansions, with uniformed servants attending to the sundry needs of stylishly gowned and tuxedoed guests. Untold numbers of Americans were standing in soup kitchen lines, loading their remaining possessions on to truck beds, or selling apples on street corners; yet they flocked to the movies, when they could, to breathe in the rarified atmosphere of their more fortunate fellow Americans.
In Rules of Civility, the debut novel of Amor Towles, it would appear that the pivotal year of 1938 was one in which the threats of war in Europe seemed far away and not particularly interesting to the young, beautiful, and wealthy; while the importance of getting on the right guest lists was a matter of world-shaping import. When Katy Kontent and her new friend Eve, two young women with modest Mid-Western roots, decide to spend the last night of the year in 1937 in a jazz bar in New York City, they do not know that a chance encounter with a picture -perfect gentleman of privilege named Tinker Grey will change their lives forever. Both young women are immediately smitten with Tinker who seems at first perhaps a tad more taken with Katy. But a car accident shifts the balance of the equation quickly and helps shape all three lives in unexpected, not always pleasant ways.
Caught up in social whirl of status seeking and ladder climbing, many of the characters in Rules of Civility seem shallow and unworthy of a second glance, despite their good looks. However, Katie and Eve are made of finer stuff. Both struggle to maintain their inner codes of honesty and self respect, although honesty and self respect are not usually valued currency in the social circle they strive to inhabit. Yet some men, such as Tinker and several of his friends, seem to question their lives of privilege, and struggle to break free of it.
As in Edith Wharton’s novels of an earlier century, Rules of Civility deftly describes a social world where appearance, good breeding, and money represent the apex of accomplishment. In this well-heeled world, civility is valued above honesty, and indifference trumps compassion. Beauty more often than love, conquers all ; and the beautiful people are content to have it so. In the end, however, no matter how beautiful the people, regrets, whether based on chance or choice, can linger for a lifetime. Read this book for an intriguing glimpse into a sparkling world, where you can have the best of everything, yet still miss out on anything that matters.
