Rules of Civility - Amor Towles

     I hesitated before beginning this book.  The setting was right:  1930's New York.  The plot seemed good:  the story of a watershed year in the life of a twenty-five year old woman whose intellect, wit, and nerve lead her from a secretarial pool on Wall Street, to a position in the executive suites of Conde-Nast publishers and into the upper echelons of New York society.  My problem: her name - Katey Kontent.  Does some little something ever turn you away from a novel?  Well, I'm glad I ignored her name and dove into Rules of Civility.  It's a journey I'm glad I didn't miss.
     When the novel opens, it is 1966.  Katey is attending the opening of Many Are Called, an exposition of Walker Evans photographs taken in the late 1930s on a New York subway with a hidden camera, when she spots a familiar face.  Behind the scruffy, work-worn exterior she sees the face of Tinker Gray and she is transported back to New Year's eve, 1937.
     That night, Katey and her roommate Eve meet Tinker Grey at nightclub and the most memorable year of her life is set in motion.  Tinker is a handsome, enigmatic banker with royal blue eyes who is clearly upper class.  Of course they both fall for him.  But things go awry when Tinker crashes his car with both girls in it and Eve is seriously wounded.  Tinker, who lives his life according to George Washington's Rules of Civility, takes her recovery in his hands and, as she heals, they become a pair - in spite of the fact that Katey knows she is the one he cares for. 
     The memory of Tinker is always with her as she grasp at every tidbit of news of him and Eve,  When the two of them separate, Tinker appears in Katey's life again but she learns he is not all he lead her to believe.  Just as she has him again, she finds out he apparently never got around to reading the last of Washington's Rules of Civililty:  "Labour to keep alive in your breast that little spark of celestial fire called conscience."  A shocking development reveals that not only has Tinker deceived her but that from the moment she met him someone else entirely is deciding all of their fates.
     Katey is a strong, spunky girl who is swept up into the New York of the 1930s:  jazz music, martinis, and jet-set parties.  She makes her way in a world where everyone is aiming to move to the top - inventing and reinventing themselves as they go along.  In that memorable year of 1938, fortunes are made and lost, lifestyles rise and fall, and meetings and choices made in a moment change lives forever.
     Amor Towles has written an engaging tale that brings the 1930s to life with vivid period detail.

~ Frances