Wednesday, February 8, 2012

Rules of Civility

Rules of Civility by Amor Towles  335 pp.

I think I've found the first book to go on my "best of 2012" list. Most of the action takes place in a flashback to Manhattan in 1938, the tail end of the Great Depression. Katey Content (accent on the second syllable) and her boarding house roommate, Evie Ross meet the handsome young banker, Theodore "Tinker" Grey at club on New Year's Eve. That fortuitous meeting changes the lives of all three, for the good and the bad. When Tinker and Eve leave for Europe, Katey leaves her secretarial pool job for one at a small publishing house where she meets and socializes with more of the wealthy New York set. Eventually she lands a position with a new magazine at Condé Nast, she learns the truth about Tinker, and Evie disappears. This book is well written, has interesting characters, and enough twists in the plot to keep the reader involved. The book is appended with George Washington's "Rules of Civility" from which the novel gets its title.

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