tales of Suchita

Do you ever just start a book because from the looks of it, you know it’ll be a slow read? And after reading 4 books in a span of 2 weeks, you’re suddenly craving a book that is not so much focussed on the plot and action but more on a single character and his life’s meanderings?

That’s exactly what Amor Towles’s A Gentleman in Moscow gives you: something slow, something profound, and something hilarious.

Count Alexander Ilyich Rostov is put under house arrest at I think the age of 30. Since his properties have been confiscated by the state, he is given a room in the Metropol hotel where he will conceivably live out the rest of his days.

Just putting this statement down, and on the heels of a pandemic and lockdown, the sense of claustrophobia seems unsurmountable. But since you’re in the capable hands of the Count, who does not believe in allowing this set back to hamper how he lives, you are instead treated to a story that shows you that you do indeed have the power to choose how you react to adversary.

As a reader, this book is a meditation on humans, friendship, parenthood and patriotism. Like the count says:

Human beings are so capricious, so complex, so delightfully contradictory, that they deserve not only our consideration but reconsideration – and our unwavering determination to withhold our opinion until we have engaged with them in every possible setting at every possible hour.

The history of Russia is so skillfully intertwined into the narrative that it compels you to set aside what you think you know about Russia and pay attention to what the author is telling you.

As a writer, this book teaches you how a single setting of a hotel room can expand and contract, how time seems at once thick and syrupy like it’ll never end and in the blink of an eye, Alexander has spent twenty-eight years in the Metropol!

To what end, he wondered, had the Divine created the stars in heaven to fill a man with feelings of inspiration one day and insignificance the next?

There is a chapter in this book titled Arrivederci and seeing that chapter towards the end of the book, I thought I knew where this book was headed. Because of course this book would end when the Count dies. It makes sense.

But I’m happy to report, I was wrong. The book does not end there and it continues in a direction that is quite unexpected – much like the journey of the Count from being an aristocrat, to being placed under house arrest, adopting a one-eyed cat, becoming the head waiter at the hotel he calls home and making friends with almost every person he encounters. As he says,

Life does not proceed by leaps and bounds. It unfolds.

It was exactly the kind of book I needed, at exactly the right time. Have you read a book that made you contemplate life and humans?