Two Gentlemen, Two Novels

A Gentleman in Moscow

Amor Towles (Viking $27)

In 1922, Count Alexander Rostov, whose family estate has been nationalized, and who has been living at Moscow’s Hotel Metropol deciding what to do next, is sentenced to indefinite house arrest in that hotel for penning a politically ambiguous poem.

As we become acquainted with Rostov, we realize he is a dinosaur: one of the last Russian gentlemen of his era. He is a symbol of the Elysian days that one character says “belonged in the past... with waistcoats and corsets, with quadrilles and bezique, with the ownership of souls, the payment of tribute, and the stacking of icons in the corner.”

Indeed, this is the only world the young Count knows or can imagine, and so it is not such a horrific fate for him, being imprisoned in this opulent hotel like an insect in amber. Yet soon enough he realizes he cannot ossify here, but must adapt in order to survive. He resolves to master his circumstances (lest they master him) and, “like Robinson Crusoe stranded on the Isle of Despair,” to “maintain his resolve by committing to the business of practicalities.”

The Count remakes himself into the best headwaiter the hotel could have imagined. His constant cheerfulness (“the surest sign of wisdom” a la Montaigne) and several unexpected talents soon make him the pivot point around which the history of the hotel swings. He cannot leave the hotel, but soon enough the world comes to him. As he reflects on his sixth-floor garret room late in the book (though he is surely speaking of the hotel more generally): “It was, without question, the smallest room that he had occupied in his life; yet somehow, within those four walls the world had come and gone.”

He is befriended by the nine-year-old daughter of a rising apparatchik also living there, and the two become fast friends (as if Eloise of the Plaza teamed up with the airport-bound Tom Hanks), exploring every cranny of the hotel, their lives increasingly intertwined and enriched.

And there is the actress Nina Kulikova, the poet Mishka, the cinephile Chekist Osip, and a multitude of other very rich characters, all of whom divert their streams of history through the Metropole’s doors, to influence and be influenced by this erudite man.

Towles is a beautiful writer and he spins a wondrous web of a story, with just enough veracity to block out the improbability of the brutal history taking place outside rarely breaching the hotel’s walls, so that we can enjoy the unfolding of this world, of these lives. His central plotting device is brilliant: time double-skips forward (three months, six months, one year, two, four, eight) with each section, until we reach a mid-point near Stalin’s death, when it slows down by the same increments, halving, in order to build to an exhilarating climax in the final days.

But of course there is more. Because Towles uses the Count’s confinement in the heart of Russia’s twentieth century maelstrom to ruminate on Fate and circumstance, on what it means to be Russian and cosmopolitan (without one excluding the other), on how one person’s actions, even if that person is confined to a prison or palace, can ripple out to the wider world. Indeed, the Count shows how one man, in mastering his circumstances, can restore a sense of order to the world he touches, even if that world is extremely off kilter.

The Summer Guest

Alison Anderson (Harper, $27.99)

About halfway through this excellent novel, as Zinaida Lintvarova’s friendship with Anton Chekhov starts to take root, she cites a poem by Tyutchev, part of which is:

How does one tell the hidden heart?
How might a stranger understand
Whereby you live, and who you are?

It seems the central question of the book, for Zinaida – a gifted doctor – has gone blind and is dying young of a brain tumor. She seeks to understand and encourage the young Chekhov, a writer on the very cusp of his rise to fame, while at the same time Chekhov seeks to understand and appreciate what is in Zinaida’s heart.

And there are at least two other layers, because we are getting to know Zinaida through the pages of her 130-year-old diary, recently discovered by émigré Katya, and being translated by Ana. So we jump back and forth in time, between the stories of Ana, Katya and Zinaida. All three are damaged in some way, lacking something, seeking some form of healing or understanding through Anton Pavlovich.

Chekhov and his family stay with the Lintvaryov family for two summers in Luka, Ukraine (this part of the novel is grounded in fact), and a deep friendship blossoms between the two highly sensitive doctors – Anton and Zinaida. She encourages him in his work, and urges him to undertake the novel he has always dreamed of writing. And this becomes the central mystery of The Summer Guest: did Chekhov in fact pen a novel, and if so, what happened to it?

Anderson paints a vivid picture of the summers at Luka along the River Psyol, with the Chekhov brothers and the doting Maria all in attendance, along with Anton’s parents. They are a boisterous family and fun and interesting to have around, a real tonic for Zinaida, who writes:

The voices of the Chekhov brothers as they laugh and prepare their lines for fishing, little suspecting that it is somewhere deep inside me that they cast their lines. They pull me up toward an ever brighter light. I can almost see it glinting on the surface.

Anderson’s portrait of Anton Pavlovich is tender and endearing. Just as his contemporaries recalled him, he is exceedingly gentle and caring, fun-loving and mischievous, yet also profoundly sad. Constantly weighed down by his family duties, Chekhov wants little more than to be someplace calm – like Luka – where he can write:

To be in such soothing surroundings – silence, nature, nothing to trouble one’s thoughts. Just a well-scrubbed room with an old table by the window and a comfortable chair. That’s all that’s needed.

But of course, this is disturbed by dramas and tragedy, by secrets and scandals. Anderson’s tale builds to a satisfyingly Chekhovian twist at the end, in which all three women find a satisfying resolution.

NOTED IN BRIEF

The Man With the Poison Gun

Serhii Plokhy (Basic Books, $28.99)

A fascinating biography of Cold War assassin and spy Bogdan Stashinsky, whose defection in 1961 implicated top Soviet leaders in political assassinations and revealed a gruesome reality of Soviet espionage.

The biographical and historical background Plokhy sets out is excellent, portraying a full picture of this dark and troubling episode and closing the door on myriad conspiracy theories. Its focus on the Russia-Ukraine nexus is particulary germane given recent events.

BEARS IN THE STREETS

Lisa Dickey (St. Martin’s $25.99)

Dickey (a three-time contributor to Russian Life) takes a longitudinal approach in this travel essay cum memoir, compiling and interweaving impressions and experiences from three different trans-Russia adventures (1995, 2005, and 2015). This approach – as she revisits and gets reacquainted with friends and places – provides an invaluable perspective on Russia’s changes over the last three decades. But it is Dickey’s easy and enjoyable style, full of insider observations and self-deprecating humor, that makes this an un-put-downable read.

HARD TIMES

Vasily Sleptsov, Translated by Michael Katz

(Univ. of Pittsburgh, $17.95)

Sleptsov was a deeply talented nineteenth-century Russian writer whose work is little known outside academia. Praised by Chekhov and Tolstoy, Sleptsov has a style that is terse, realistic, and rich in descriptive detail. His characters are vividly drawn, and the dialog is filled with humor and irony.

This superb translation by Michael Katz (a Russian Life Advisory Board member) brings into English for the first time Sleptsov’s searing examination of post-emancipation life in Russia. In Sleptsov’s take, peasant and landowner exist in two irreconcilable worlds, a reality no reform seems capable of bridging. In fact, the novel is a rumination on whether Russia should pursue a path of gradual or radical reform, and it was the focus of heated debate at the end of the nineteenth century. Which makes it all the more surprising it has never before been translated.