Rules of Civility: A Novel

by Amor Towles

Paperback, 2012

Status

Available

Publication

Penguin Books (2012), Edition: Reprint, 368 pages

Description

Fiction. Literature. Historical Fiction. HTML: From the #1 New York Times-bestselling author of The Lincoln Highway and A Gentleman in Moscow, a ??sharply stylish? (Boston Globe) book about a young woman in post-Depression era New York who suddenly finds herself thrust into high society??now with over one million readers worldwide 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 down at the neighboring table. This chance encounter and its startling consequences propel Katey on a year-long journey into 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. With its sparkling depiction of New York??s social strata, its intricate imagery and themes, and its immensely appealing characters, Rules of Civility won the hearts of readers and crit… (more)

Media reviews

In Towles’s first novel, “Rules of Civility,” his clever heroine, who grew up in Brooklyn as “Katya,” restyles herself in 1930s Manhattan as the more clubbable “Katey,” aspiring to all-American inclusion. As World War II gears up, raising the economy from bust to boom, Katey’s wit
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and charm lift her from a secretarial pool at a law firm to a high-profile assistant’s perch at a flashy new Condé Nast magazine. One night at the novel’s outset touches off the chain reaction that will produce both Katey’s career and her husband, and define her entire adult life. She’s swept into the satin-and-cashmere embrace of the smart set — blithe young people with names like Dicky and Bitsy and Bucky and Wallace — with their Oyster Bay mansions, their Adirondack camps, their cocktails at the St. Regis and all the fog of Fishers Island.
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2 more
If there's a problem, it's this: the parallels with Breakfast at Tiffany's are perhaps a little too overt (glamorous but down-at-heel girl falls in love with wealthy but mysterious benefactor). But that's not exactly a complaint. This is a flesh-and-blood tale you believe in, with fabulous period
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detail. It's all too rare to find a fun, glamorous, semi-literary tale to get lost in.
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Manhattan in the late 1930s is the setting for this saga of a bright, attractive and ambitious young woman whose relationships with her insecure roommate and the privileged Adonis they meet in a jazz club are never the same after an auto accident.

User reviews

LibraryThing member BrokenTune
—Oh stop, Eve said. It’s dreadful. What is it?
—Virginia Woolf.
—Ugh. Tinker brought home all these novels by women as if that’s what I needed to get me back on my feet. He’s surrounded my bed with them. It’s as if he’s planning to brick me in. Isn’t there anything else?

Rules of
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Civility left me cold. I did not hate it, I did not like, I certainly did not love it as much as other people, including a lot of readers whose reviews I value, loved this book.

I don't even know whether it was the detached voice of Katey Kontent that made me feel nothing about anything in this book or whether it was the embellished detail of 1930s jazziness that got on my nerves and made me look hard for another aspect of the book that I could get into. Something like a plot or an interesting character. Or at least one that did not feel like a cardboard cut-out.
I may have detested F.S. Fitzgerald's main characters, but at least they were memorable. I may have disliked Evelyn Waugh's tone and snobbishness, but at least his books carried an air of authenticity by attempting to be satire.

I don't even know what the book was trying to do.

Nope, Rules of Civility just did not work for me.
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LibraryThing member Florinda
For about a week, during my daily drive to and from work across 2012 Los Angeles, I was simultaneously transported to 1938 New York City via the audiobook of Amor Towles’ 2011 novel, Rules of Civility, as read by Rebecca Lowman. I’m still pretty new to audiobooks, and for the most part, I’ve
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enjoyed nonfiction audios more than fiction, but this novel was a joy to listen to. That’s partly because I’m a sucker for books set in not-so-old New York, but Towles’ protagonist Katey Kontent is an original, and they way Lowman gave voice to her story stuck in my head and actually made me eager for my commute. It takes something special to do that.

Rules of Civility opens in 1966, when a woman unexpectedly spots a familiar face in the photos on display at an art opening and finds herself remembering 1938, the remarkable year when she knew its owner. At 25, Katey (originally Katya) Kontent (accent on the second syllable) had already made her way out of the Russian enclave of Brighton Beach, Brooklyn and into the secretarial pool of a Lower Manhattan law firm, and was getting to know her city better in the company of her roommate, Midwestern transplant Evelyn (originally Evie) Ross. When the girls crossed paths with Tinker (originally Theodore) Grey a few hours before the start of 1938 and they all share a New Year’s toast to “getting out of ruts,” they had no idea that the end of the year would find them all in very different places.

Personal reinvention has long been part of the mythos of New York City, and it’s a primary theme of the novel; the title comes from a list of “instructions for living” that George Washington compiled for himself, and which serves as a personal guidebook for Tinker. Eve and Tinker’s purposeful reinventions have effects and repercussions for Katey, shaping and redirecting her own less calculated self-making. 1938 is a year in which Katey experiences much of New York life for the first time, and she gets the opportunity to choose which aspects of it she wants to carry forward. She works hard and well, she’s wry and observant, she’s smart, independent, and open to taking calculated risks...and she never goes anywhere without a book. I don’t think she was created to be instantly lovable, but I found her thoroughly engaging and would have been happy to follow her story through decades, rather than just one year (although we do get an epilogue).

But having said that, I rather hope there won’t be a sequel; as much as I adored Katey, I felt that Rules of Civility told the story it meant to tell in full, and told it well. Like its protagonist, Amor Towles’ debut novel is assured, smart, and well-observed, and openly wears its mid-20th-century influences. Audiobooks can amplify weaknesses in writing, but aside from an over-reliance on similes, I didn’t find many here. Rebecca Lowman managed to give distinct voices to nearly every character, and her interpretation of Katey--and her city--sounded perfect to my ears. Rules of Civility is distinctly and proudly a New York story, with a distinctly, proudly New York cast of characters, and I was thoroughly immersed in its world.
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LibraryThing member hardlyhardy
Manners are masquerade, something we all learned while our mothers were trying to teach us to say "please" and "thank you." You don't have to mean it to say it.

Amor Towles plays with this idea in his impressive debut novel “Rules of Civility” (2011). Spanning the year 1938 in New York City, the
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story brings together three attractive young people looking ahead to a promising post-Depression future. Our narrator, Katey Kontent, grew up in a lower middle-class family in the city, while Eve has a more well-to-do family back in the Midwest. They work in a secretarial pool.

One night they meet Tinker Grey, handsome, well-tailored and well-mannered. Eve claims him as her own, even though Tinker appears to prefer Katey. Yet when they go out at night, it is always the three of them together. Then Eve is disfigured in a traffic accident while Tinker is driving. Out of guilt, he takes responsibility for her care and moves her into his apartment, while Katey becomes more distant.

What begins with the suggestion of a love triangle evolves into something else, and this something else relates to, of all things, 110 "Rules of Civility," which George Washington studied as a young man striving to make a success of himself in the world. Tinker, too, has studied these rules, and Katey comes to realize the rules hide a different Tinker Grey. (The book includes the 110 rules in an appendix.)

Towles writes with wit, subtlety and grace while revealing that Tinker is not alone in hiding a true self behind good manners.
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LibraryThing member readingwithtea
"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."

This is one novel I wish I’d listened to in audiobook – and I may try to get it in audio just so that I can. Towles has chosen to set his social
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study in carefree late 1930s Manhattan, choosing as his heroine a witty, smart, ahead of her time daughter of a Russian immigrant, Katya (now Katey) Kontent. Katey lives in Mrs Martingale’s boarding house with Evey Ross, and the two of them go out for New Year’s Eve on 1937 and befriend Tinker Grey, a young socialite banker. An awkward double romance develops but when Evey is disabled in a winter accident, Tinker throws his lot in with her. Katey moves on through New York society but every road seems to lead her back to Tinker eventually.

Towles has chosen to frame his story through the perspective of Katey as an older woman, reminded of the escapades of her youth by a photographic exhibition she attends with her husband. The first person narrative is slightly limiting, but by having Katey as the sensible one and Evey as the one whom trouble follows, we do of course get an interesting story. And this is an era with which I am entirely unacquainted! Most of my reading is set in pre-1900 or 1960+. The glamour and optimism of the late 30s in the USA, Manhattan before cell phones and yellow taxis and fear of terrorism, even the immigrant experience of the USA (it's only really in Daughter of Fortune and Snow Falling on Cedars that I have run across it before) - all are new to me in literature and they were wonderful.

One of the things I love about reading on the Kindle is how easy it is to highlight passages and then come back to them when I am writing the review. Towles has a beautiful writing style, using words and phrases like "fabdabulous", "the wine was older than me" and "a burgeoning taste for flawlessness". Some of the ones I marked as I went through Rules of Civility:

On starting on page 104 of a Hemingway novel:

"Bit characters stood on equal footing with the central subjects and positively bludgeoned them with disinterested common sense. The protagonists didn't fight back. They seemed relieved to be freed from the tyranny of their tale. It made me want to read all of Hemingway's books this way"

Other quotes:

"He felt elaborately around the bag until he brought out a cinnamon donut perched upright on his fingertips. Which, as it turns out, is all it takes to secure a place in my affections."

"It's terrific, I admitted. But I can't help thinking how much better it would look on you, given the color of your hair. If I may be so bold, Miss Kontent, the color of my hair is available to you on the second floor."

"At peace with the notion that he would join them soon enough in that circle of Elysium reserved for plot and substance and the judicious use of the semicolon" possibly my favourite book quote ever.

Well worth the read. Get your hands on a copy if you can, and even better if it's in audio!
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LibraryThing member countrylife
...life is less like a journey than it is a game of honeymoon bridge. In our twenties, when there is still so much time ahead of us, time that seems ample for a hundred indecisions, for a hundred visions and revisions – we draw a card, and we must decide right then and there whether to keep that
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card and discard the next, or discard the first card and keep the second. And before we know it, the deck has been played out and the decisions we have just made will shape our lives for decades to come. . . . I have no doubt that they were the right choices for me. And at the same time, I know that right choices by definition are the means by which life crystallizes loss.

This is a book about choices and consequences, relationships and life. It is 1938 in New York City, when two young working girls, Katey and Evie, meet Tinker Grey, a banker. Katey narrates this eventful year in their lives and tells the story of the years following.

The book takes its name from Washington's 'Rules of Civility and Decent Behaviour in Company and Conversation', a copy of which Tinker kept as a keepsake from his mother, with an aspirational list composed by the founder in his teenage years: . . . There were 110 of them! And over half were underlined – one adolescent sharing another's enthusiasm for propriety across a chasm of 150 years.

The book is punctuated by pictures from the 'Many Are Called' exhibit, portraits taken by hidden camera by Walker Evans in the late 1930s, which opened at the Museum of Modern Art in 1966.

The Rules and the Portraits frame the story, but the focal point in this picture is this group of friends superimposed on the City. ...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.

This is a character-driven story, with sharp writing, characters written with insight, and a superbly descriptive setting. I loved it. (4.4 stars)
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LibraryThing member susiesharp
This was an interesting look at a single woman’s life in the late 30’s it also gave a look at New York City in this time period. This was a great period piece post flapper, post depression a time when things were looking up for some who had lost everything and were building it back and those
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who tagged along for the ride. Katey Kontent is a great character trying to make her way on her own but soon realizes that everything in her life happens because of different people she has known. Her roommate Eve is well lets us just say I didn’t like her much, and the man she longs for Tinker seems to always be just out of her reach.

This was really beautifully written and just kind of a narrative/snapshot of Miss Katey Kontent’s life in the 30’s. It was written in such a way that you could picture it all in your mind’s eye and the atmosphere of the time surrounds you. It’s the jazz clubs, Rolls Royce’s, and taxi cabs, the fancy penthouses to the women only boardinghouses. Love the end when she reads all the Rules of Civility by, George Washington I think some of these are still very relevant today!

Rebecca Lowman narrated this audiobook and did a really good job at all the different characters.

This was a good book that is getting a lot of buzz right now and I think it deserves it if you like historical fiction, the late 30’s and strong female characters give this one a go!

4 Stars
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LibraryThing member ainsleytewce
It took me awhile to appreciate this book, but I'm glad that I stuck with it. Aside from a character getting into a car accident, not a lot happens in the first hundred pages. There are a lot of party scenes, characters going here and there, having witty exchanges. But by the end, a plot and some
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serious themes do emerge.
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LibraryThing member Clara53
"Rules of Civility" is a bitter-sweet, charming "song" to New York of late 1930s. (Somehow Woody Allen comes to mind...). And although usually it's a debut novel that attracts one to the promising author, for me it was his second one, "A Gentleman in Moscow" (which I adored), and in this way, I
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look forward to even more impressive work from Mr. Towles. The style is distinctly "his own" in both novels.
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LibraryThing member Bookmarque
Like Nick Carraway, Katey Kontent isn't part of New York society, but rather she mixes well with it and is just enough aloof to report with a critical eye what she sees. Also like Nick, she doesn't really envy them their positions, money and all the game-playing that goes with it. She's not as
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dispassionate a narrator and because she joins that society eventually, the similarity with Nick ends.

From the very first pages, I was entranced by this story and by Katey herself although she takes a while to show through fully. So much of the initial narrative is about Eve and Tinker and their strange triangle. Eve starts out as a typical flirt, but oh does she end mysteriously and I really liked Towles for that. He could have taken the easy way out with her character, making her vapid and materialistic and even though that's what we think of her at first, our impression is corrected. In an almost direct inverse proportion so is our impression of Tinker. Too good to be true.

I think one of the reasons I was entranced (besides the writing which I'll get to) is Katey herself. She's everything I have never been and once aspired to. She's quietly confident, witty, well-read and fearless. She sees clear to what she wants and puts her life together to achieve it. She quickly figures out what is important, what isn't and how to extricate herself from unwanted entanglements. She has talent and isn't afraid to bet on it. She leads with her strength. I can't describe her better than Tinker did so here -

"Right from the first, I could see a calmness in you - that sort of inner tranquility that they write about in books, but that almost no one seems to possess. I was wondering to myself: How does she do that? And I figured it could only come from having no regrets - from having made choices with...such poise and purpose. It stopped me in my tracks a little. And I just couldn't wait to see it again." p. 229

That's one of the things I loved about this book. Not only did I want to see how the many entanglements would work out, but I was also intrigued as the layers of personality peeled. No one was quite as they seemed. Wallace Wolcott should have been an overbearing boor, but instead he was slightly unsure of himself, sensitive and astute about the personalities around him. Anne should have been wise, sophisticated and without blemish, but she was frail, proud and slightly amoral. Tinker had the most polished disguise though and tried to make it his own. I was glad when he dropped it and forged his own life.

The writing was pretty marvelous. Mostly these days, I skim. There. I said it. And I think most writers write for that anyway. There's very little to savor and very little to think about in terms of the choices the author made to convey an idea. Even though there were a lot of similes, most of them were apt and none of them bothered me. The tone and style were of a piece and nothing jarred or took me out of the story. Here's an example -

"Part of the joy of Dicky was the ableness with which he flitted from moment to moment and topic to topic like a sparrow in a hurricane of crumbs." p. 280

Even a slightly sidelined character like Dicky has a full and rounded personality. The paper airplanes and the note signed Peter Pan made me wistful to know someone to like that and how infectious his adventurous nature must have been. When Wallace's Christmas present arrived, now from beyond the grave, I very nearly teared up. Yes, the dialog is a tad too perfectly sharp and witty, but like the movies from the same time period, it seduces with that dialog and make you wish your world had such clarity and daring. It may not be true-to-life, but I love it anyway and it's part of the piece, the atmosphere that Towles delivers so well. If Katey stammered and stuttered and had a thin vocabulary, the story would not nearly be so vibrant. And who wants our heroes to have feet of clay anyway?

Another wonderful part of the story is the setting and the time. No I'm not a city-dweller nor do I even like cities, but New York in the 1930s had a glamour about it that is difficult to encapsulate. Certainly it is greater than the sum of its parts. However, though I don't think he's old enough to have lived in it then, Towles conveys it very well. It's the new buildings. The jazz clubs. The music. The restaurants. The taxis. The lights. The air of lightness that came, I suspect partly, from the repeal of Prohibition. The fashion. The freedom and possibility for women. All of it is glossy, exciting and romantic. He doesn't get too sentimental though, describing a lot of what by contrast is the short end of that same stick. The working class, the working poor, immigrants and coloreds (as termed in the 1930s) all make an appearance. And Katey, after all, is a working stiff too, and lives in first a boarding house for young women and then a dingy little apartment with windows so drafty she has to cram the cracks with old underwear.

Through all these things though, Katey is serene and despite my cringing at the fact that there was a preface set far in the future of the main story, it worked very well to frame the story and the characters within it. Oh and at the end, all 110 of Washington's Rules of Civility are reprinted. Like many of the other books mentioned throughout Katey's story, this one is also real. How marvelous.
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LibraryThing member Sensory
I don't read a lot of ebooks - I'm very much a paperback reader. With ebooks I lose some sense of where I am in a book by not being able to look at it physically. I find it easier to flip back to find some plot point that I want to check or the context in which a character first appeared. So, when
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I was offered a chance to review Rules of Civility by Amor Towles in an ebook format, I hesitated. But drawn in by the book's description on the author's website I took a chance. I am so glad I did. Despite the format, I adored this book!

The setting is Manhattan in the late 1930's. The threat of the Second World War is in the distant future and life, for the most part, is good. The reader sees what New York City was like during that era through the eyes of a young woman surviving quite well on her own in that large metropolis. The author did a fantastic job describing the culture of the young and carefree in an exciting city - so much so that the city takes on a character all of its own. Cocktails, bars, apartments, neighbourhoods and iconic buildings all figure prominently in this book. If you love the romance and cultural aura of New York City, you'll find plenty of it here.

I really liked the protagonist, Kate Kontent. She-s a well-written character - smart, sassy, independent and with a good dose of subtle humour thrown in. She's isn't perfect; I picked up hints of envy in some situations and loneliness in others. It's not that much was said, but rather shown (which I think is one of the trickiest talents a writer can develop and Amor Towles has it in spades). But Kate isn't a wallflower; she acts on her instincts so that when she isn't happy about something she takes steps to change it. And this is one of the reasons why the story moved along quickly and flowed so well. Dialogue between Kate and her contemporaries was also well done.

I also really liked the portrayal of women in this era. It seems that women in the 1930's are much further along in society than their later counterparts. The freedom of the earlier era was gone by the 1950's as the standard of a woman's worth was depicted with the iconic house dress-wearing female staying home and having babies. But perhaps that was the sign of prosperity. In any case, this freedom surprised me too - I've always assumed that any era before the 1950's had to be a worse one for women in general, but I didn't pick that up from this novel at all.

I loved this book because I like NYC and I found the 1930's era so interesting to read about. But to enjoy Rules of Civility you don't have to like those things too because it offers so much more. This book is a well-written, well-rounded great story from an author that I'll be putting on my must-read list for future books.
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LibraryThing member gaskella
Scene: New York City, 1966 – an elderly couple, Katey and Val, are at a gallery viewing of photographs, all taken of passengers on the subway over many years. The same man occurs in two photos, but in obviously different circumstances years apart. Katey recognises him – it’s Tinker Grey…
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which takes her back to New Year’s Eve 1937 and the first time she met him.

Katey is a New Yorker, born of Russian stock, and just at the beginning of her career – starting out as a secretary and rooming at Mrs Martindale’s boarding house with her roommate Eve. Eve is blonde and from Iowa, moved to the city to find fame and fortune. New Year’s Eve 1937 sees them in a jazz club down to their last nickels when a tall striking man in a cashmere coat walks in the door. Eve bags him and thus the girls meet Theodore ‘Tinker’ Grey and one of the seminal years of Kate’s life will begin. (ARC supplied by Amazon Vine).

Although Eve ends up with Tinker, you constantly get the feeling that he’d rather be with Katey; but after a car crash a few weeks later in which Tinker was driving and Eve was injured, he felt his duty was to look after Eve. We follow this year of ups and downs with all three of them, through Katey’s eyes. Katey is the archetypal good girl made good – we see her elevated from the typing pool to Editor’s assistant, she’s not afraid to work hard, and is well read. Katey is not averse to having fun though, and with Tinker off limits, she nearly finds love with the lovely Wallace Wolcott. He may have New England money, but he needs a real purpose in life and leaves to go fight in Spain. Meanwhile Tinker and Eve are doing their best impressions of Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald in Europe. Katey remains puzzled by Tinker though – there are things about him that don’t ring true, and it will take the end of Eve and his relationship, and some hard truths that Katey discovers to find out the truth at the end of the year.

Maybe it’s because New Yorkers appear to live and work in a totally faster gear to the rest of us, but it felt as if there was a lifetime crammed into this novel – but what a life! The period setting was irresistible to me, full of jazz, cocktails and parties. Katey and Eve may have done well to land in the set with which they mix, but Katey never forgets where she comes from, having her feet firmly on the ground – well, for most of the time. Seeing it all through her eyes shows the others’ bad behaviour for what it was, but I almost shed a tear for poor Wallace though, who hadn’t a single bad bone in his body.

This novel had more than a hint of 'Mad Men' about it for me, done 'Great Gatsby' style. Katey reminded me very much of Peggy Olsen in the TV series, whereas Tinker and Eve could have been Dick Diver and Nicole from 'Tender is the Nigh' – doomed from the start. Hearing the story from Eve’s point of view would have been terribly different and frankly boring; Katey is by far the more interesting character, and her story makes for a fine debut novel indeed.
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LibraryThing member writestuff
Katey Kontent and her effervescent roommate Eve are spending their last night of 1937 in a Greenwich Village jazz bar. By chance, they cross paths with Tinker Grey who is handsome, wealthy and charming. Both young women find themselves irresistibly drawn to Tinker, an attraction that threatens to
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divide their friendship. When a night out on the town goes horribly wrong, Katey must use her spunk, wits and intelligence to overcome poverty and betrayal and find her way through New York high society.

Rules of Civility is narrated in the voice of Katey nearly thirty years after her first encounter with Tinker when she was a twenty-five year old secretary trying to work her way to the top. Katey introduces the reader to a large cast of memorable characters which include a manipulative widow named Anne Grandyn, the honorable and sweet Wallace Wolcott, and Katey’s power hungry boss Mason Tate. Amor Towles creates a party-like atmosphere of young adults crossing paths, finding love (or not), and uncovering family secrets. Characters move in and out of the narrative with Katey as the pivotal character around whom they all spin.

Towles keeps the tone of his debut novel lighthearted and sharp, and seamlessly integrates the atmosphere of New York City in the late 1930s.

Sitting in that seat, in the span of a sandwich you could pay witness to the pilgrimage of New York’s devoted. Hailing from every corner of Europe, donned in every shade of gray, they turned their backs on the Statue of Liberty and marched instinctively up Broadway, leaning with pluck into a cautionary wind, gripping identical hats to identical haircuts, happy to count themselves among the indistinguishable. With over a millennia of heritage behind them, each with their own glimpse of empire and some pinnacle of human expression (a Sistine Chapel or Gotterdammerung), now they were satisfied to express their individuality through which Rogers they preferred at the Saturday matinee: Ginger or Roy or Buck. America may be the land of opportunity, but in New York it’s the shot at conformity that pulls them through the door. – from Rules of Civility, page 39 -

Filled with literary references, clever dialogue and intriguing plot, The Rules of Civility is an engaging book. Towles explores the idea of fate or chance vs. being the maker of our own destiny. Katey meets Tinker by accident, but realizes early on that she must find her own path despite what cards fate deals her. Even with this knowledge, she struggles to understand the consequences of not only her choices, but the choices of others.

There is an oft-quoted passage in Walden, in which Thoreau exhorts us to find our pole star and to follow it unwaveringly as would a sailor or a fugitive slave. It’s a thrilling sentiment – one so obviously worthy of our aspirations. But even if you had the discipline to maintain the true course, the real problem it has always seemed to me, is how to know in which part of the heavens your star resides. – from The Rules of Civility, page 230 -

Katey Kontent is one of those characters who begs the reader to travel with her along her journey. We want to see her succeed. We want her to find love. Our hearts ache when she stumbles, and rejoices when she overcomes adversity. Vibrant, smart and with just enough innocence to make her believable, Katey is a heroine who readers will not soon forget.

Amor Towles has written a wonderful first novel. He is an author to watch.

Recommended.
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LibraryThing member bachaney
Rules of Civility is set in a bustling New York of the late 1930s. Katie, a young independent woman, is trying to support herself in the big city and have some fun around town. On New Years Eve, she and her friend Eve meet a young wealthy man, Tinker Grey. They all quickly become fast friends, with
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the girls enjoying the high rolling lifestyle Tinker enjoys. A few weeks after their meeting, they are all in a car accident together, an event that will set into motion a series of events over the next year that will change Katie's life, and her outlook on the world, forever.

I really enjoyed this book. It's portrayal of New York City during the late 30s, when some people were living a high flying life untouched by the Depression and others were struggling to make ends meet, feels authentic, and Towles uses it not only as a backdrop for the story, but as a major plot element and motivation for the characters. Katie is so real, thanks in part to the stark, simple language Towles uses to describe her world. There is nothing flowery or soaring here, but this actually makes the novel stronger and Katie's life choices more real. I felt like I really went on a life journey with Katie over this story of a year in her life, and that I was as shocked by the revelations in the novel as she was. And to me this is the sign of a really great novel--a piece of fiction I really get lost in and grow with the characters.

I would recommend this novel to fans of literary fiction. There's a reason this was one of the most buzzed about books of the summer! It really is that powerful, and a piece of literature you won't soon forget.
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LibraryThing member John_Warner
The author succinctly summarizes the plot of this novel through its protagonist, Katey Kontent:

The year 1938 had been one in which four people of great color and character had held welcome sway over my life. And here it was December 31, 1940, and I hadn't seen a single one of them in over a year.

It
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is 1938, the Great Depression is nearing an end but the premonitions of WWII are on the horizon. On New Years Eve 1937, 25-year-old Katey and her best friend, Eve Ross, both from the same boarding house, decide to celebrate the holiday together. When the two encounter a dapper young man, Theodore "Tinker" Grey, Eve calls dibs but over time it seems that Katey and Tinker have a stronger connection. As these three meet on and off during the next couple of months, the number of friends grow.

Having read and loved this author's subsequent novel, The Gentleman in Moscow, I was torn whether or not to read his first, much different, first book. I'm thrilled that Mr. Towles did not let me down. I believe that his works will be considered classics in fifty years or so. Damn! Can this man write. What a gift for the metaphor. Examples I highlighted are:

After the Crash, you couldn't hear the bodies hitting the pavement, but there was a sort of communal gasp and then a stillness that fell over the city like snow.

or

Her last-minute dress was a red silk number with a scooped neckline, and she had apparently traded up to her best support bra--because the tops of her breasts could be seen from fifty feet in a fog.

The author so clearly describes the setting, mood and the characters so well that I easily found myself walking in the snow of Greenwich Village, entering jazz clubs and becoming one of Katety's friends. I'm looking forward to his next book.
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LibraryThing member EvelynBernard
Rules of Civility perfectly encapsulates a time and a place - New York City between the two World Wars - a time of jazz, hope and opportunity. Two friend, Katey and Evey go out on New Years Eve in 1937 and chance to meet Tinker, a handsome young man in a $1,000 cashmere coat. The story takes place
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in 1938, told from Katey's perspective. Katey comes from modest means. She starts out in the steno pool and through drive, determination and taking advantage of opportunity works her way up to an editorial job and and a place in the rarefied circle of the New York wealthy. Evey comes from a well-to-do family in the mid-West but does not want to sit back and enjoy her family money on their terms. The three become fast friends but when Evey is injured in an accident where Tinker was the driver, he casts his lot with her.

This book is beautifully written with smart, snappy dialogue and an intriguing plot. I was put in mind of the writings of F. Scott Fitzgerald. I would most certainly recommend this excellent novel.
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LibraryThing member dgmlrhodes
This book was one of my favorites of the year. It was set in 1938 with the lead character with the name of Kate Kontent. Kate works in a secretarial pool and has an affinity for literature. I loved her immediately.

I also enjoyed the glamour and the hard lessons learned by the characters throughout
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the book. There is a strong story line brushing up against jazz and the artistic life in New York.

Overall, there was strong character development and a wonderful story line. I would definitely recommend this book, especially to those who enjoy historical fiction
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LibraryThing member deslivres5
As a former NYer, I loved this book for the main character, NYC!
It was interesting reading following a set of NYers in the years following the Great Depression to the US entering WWII. The lives of the main characters intersecting and interacting left me with a little bit of Seinfeld "a show about
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nothing" feeling. The appendices listing all of George Washington's Rules of Civility was a nice touch.
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LibraryThing member CookieDemon
(This review also appears on Amazon.co.uk)

What an excellent debut. I actually found it hard to believe that this was Tovey's first novel as he has done such a believable job in evoking 1930's New York, with its sense of frivolity and decadence, as well as creating an array of memorable characters
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that the reader comes to care about. I really can't wait to see what he comes up with next.

Set in Manhattan, the book is narrated by Katey Kontent, a well-read secretary who along with her beautiful friend Eve gets pulled into the glamorous Manhattan social scene after encountering dapper Tinker Grey in a jazz bar one New Years Eve. The book follows the turbulent lifestyles of the three characters over the next few years and mingles in New York's high society as the US teeters on the brink of depression.

Initially we meet Katey in the 1960's as she explores an art gallery with her husband, then the plot jumps back in time thirty years and we come to understand Katey's life then and now. Generally, Katey has a strong voice as a narrator, though I have to concede that perhaps the reader doesn't get to know her as well as they might hope as she does seem quite distant from what's going on a lot of the time. You actually learn a bit more about her friends and associates than you do about her. I personally think it was the secondary characters that remained stronger in this book- including roguish Tinker and the gentlemanly Wallace. Though I have to say, not a lot happens in the novel plot-wise, so be aware of that and don't expect a fantastically paced plot. It is definitely more of a character driven book, though for me that remained part of its charm, and it was most certainly easy-reading.

Overall this was an engaging story with a likeable cast and a few good twists to keep the reader interested. If you are looking for an atmospheric, decadent read that will transport you to another place, give this a go- and make sure you have a cocktail handy and some jazz music on standby to really help you soak up the atmosphere!
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LibraryThing member saratoga99
Without a doubt, Rules of Civility ranks in the top ten of 2011's best debut novels. The magic, mesmerizing setting of New York City in the late 1930's, the captivatingly distinct characters of Katey Kontent, Eve Ross and Tinker Grey amid the varied shades of truth and incalculable choices that
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ultimately cast whose lives flourish and those who audaciously weather the storms of loss intact.
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LibraryThing member silva_44
This book is like a rich, many-layered chocolate cake, with a slightly burned bottom. While I enjoyed the characters and plot immensely, I was left with an unquestionably empty feeling at novel's end, which is what I suspect Amor Towles was aiming at. Definitely worth the experience.
LibraryThing member nivramkoorb
As a first novel I was very impressed with author's language. Unfortunately, I was not as taken by the subject matter as others that have read this book. I found that the book did a good job bringing out the era but I guess I don't find the rich and aspiring to be rich that interesting. There was
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very little recognition and acknowledgement of the depression. I found the characters a little too much. The running joke about Kontent versus Kontent in terms of which syllable to emphasis wore thin very soon. I also found the lead character's connection to the people she met in 1938 to be too hard to believe. Quick connections became deep relationships. It just didn't ring true.
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LibraryThing member MickyFine
On New Year's Eve 1937, Katey Kontent meets a handsome young man who belongs to the upper strata of Manhattan society. Over the course of 1938, their relationship will have implications for Katey's life as she explores the intricacies and eccentricities of this select group who continue to carry on
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in the behaviours that define their class, even in the face of the Depression.

From the opening pages, this novel sets you at ease with a witty and intelligent narrator in Katey Kontent who proves a fascinating guide through her life and various social circles during 1938. New York City during this era is brilliantly evoked and filled with a cast of characters who feel familiar immediately and yet pique your interest as they pass through Katey's life. With delectable language, imagery, and exploration of themes, Towles creates a novel to be savoured like the many gin martinis poured throughout.
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LibraryThing member amillion
3.5 to 4 stars - but this book has really had me thinking about it. The writing is gorgeous, the time period exciting and vibrant, the character development and voice amazing (especially for a man writing a woman's voice). An interesting premise for a book to take George Washington's 115 rules of
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civility and to create a story and characters around the adherence (and lack of adherence) to these social conventions. My favorite concept (wish I had the exact quote) was the comparison of life to Honeymoon Bridge where for every card you draw, you decide to keep it and throw the next one away (unseen) or take the next one (unseen) and throw the current known card away. At each decision in our lives, we make "right" decisions, but these ultimately limit our life's possibilities. It's an easy, fun read, but with more depth than expected when you stop to think about it. A great conversation at my book group!
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LibraryThing member LindaLoretz
There were so many layers to this novel, as well as lessons for life and themes. I finished reading the book, saving the Appendix, Washington's rules for civility for another time. Then, I read some of the discussion questions online, and I came across a question asking how Eliot's poem, "The Love
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Song of J. Alfred Prufrock," is central to the story. So, I examined the poem and realized the word "time" is used 14 times, not counting time-related words such as minute and moment. Then I went to Washington's rules and counted the word "time" 12 times. In the entire Towles novel, variations of the word time appear 241 times; the word moment used 82 times. When I searched for words such as minute, hour, and day, there were about 300 more matches. I am not trying to reduce this novel to its literal terms, but rather emphasize the importance of Katey Kontent's 1969 reminiscing in the book's preface to the main story that takes place mostly in 1938. Through this ingenious novel with well-developed minor and major characters, we can't help but remember that it takes a lifetime to figure out how different people have influenced us. And of course, it only takes an unforeseen moment to encounter individuals who will eventually impact our lives. We don't know, especially when we are young, how our decisions and reactions will affect us forever. This novel provides us with so much material for considering such trite expressions as "time will tell," "it only takes a moment," and "make every minute count."

Katey is a struggling secretary when we meet her, and the characters important to her in 1938. Eve, Tinker, Dicky, and Wallace play essential roles in her development during that year. She spends considerable quality time with each of them. Katey Kontent thinks she knows each of them, but she didn't understand much about them or herself. She made assumptions that did not always pan out. She thought she knew what would make her "content," and she did not. She thought she could identify her allies, and she was off base, especially when it came to some minor characters such as Anne Grandyn and Hank Grey.

Social strata and the caste system is alive and well in New York City in 1938 as the Depression is coming to an end, and men are preparing to go to war. Katey comes from a poor working-class family, and her friend Eve comes from wealth that she chooses to reject. Tinker is seemingly from old money, but the clues indicate that his family's wealth was not what he conveyed. Katey recognizes the differences in the world view. Her ambitions vacillate between her roots, including family and friends from the rooming house and the people in her life who demonstrate the power of wealth. Katey's reading, notably Dickens and Agatha Christie, leads to inner conflict and growth—both personally and professionally. A significant event in her career development occurs when she interviews doormen and elevator boys for a cover story at Conde Nast. She recognizes the intelligence of those in lower strata of society. She makes profound impressions on her boss and friends living in the flophouses with her desire to live in both worlds. She is continually in conflict with the importance of upbringing to success, and this turmoil is central to Towles' characters in Rules of Civility.

There are so many symbols and motifs that I think I would have to reread the novel to truly address them. The concept of civility is at the core of every literary device Towles employs. I’m left with much to ponder. What makes one civil? Which aspects of friendship are essential? When is betrayal acceptable? Who is capable of forgiveness? Can we escape our upbringing? Who can be reinvented?
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LibraryThing member TheLostEntwife
Early this year, several tweets and blogs popped up extolling the virtues of this lovely little book by Amor Towles (even the name spells class, folks, even the name), and I had an extra audible credit and was looking at making a few road trips, so I picked it up.

I spent several hours in the car
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falling under the spell of Rebecca Lowman as she carefully, meticulously, and with just the right amount of enthusiasm, narrated the adventures of Katey Kontent and her friends, Tinker and Eve. I'm already in love with this period of history (1938), and Amor Towles captured the elegance, refined nature, and beauty in a way that was simple, understated, and beautiful.

As I listened to the story I relaxed - my mind filled with images that were last evoked by reading The Great Gatsby, and I giggled with girlish delight upon meeting some of the most well-rounded characters I've been introduced to. This is such a quiet, unassuming book, but it's filled with a story that leaves no detail left unsaid while not wishing to presume upon you to say them.

If you picked up on book, or just one audio even, this year - just one, I'd recommend this be put on the top of your list of choices. It's a beautiful book and I just cannot praise it enough.
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Awards

RUSA CODES Reading List (Shortlist — Historical Fiction — 2012)

Language

Original language

English

Barcode

10626
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