Jaclyn’s Review: Rules of Civility by Amor Towles

Rules of Civility
written by Amor Towles
published by Viking Adult, 2011

find it here: (affiliate links) Barnes & Noble, Amazon, iBooks, Kobo, Target, Walmart, Book Depository, Goodreads

Did I enjoy this book? I really liked this book! This was on a summer reading list from the Today Show and had a long wait at the library, so I rushed to read it as soon as it was available. The author did a fantastic job of setting the scene and bringing you into the story. Reading this story brought to mind all the stories my husband’s grandmother would tell us of her time as a nurse in New York City in the 1940s. It was amazing to read the lives the author wove for these single women, in a time when this was highly unusual. The plot was equally compelling, and I loved every part of it.

 

 

Would I recommend it? Absolutely. This was a fantastic story, and it was wonderfully written. Please go read this book!!

 

About the book – from Goodreads: On the last night of 1937, twenty-five-year-old Katey Kontent is in a second-rate Greenwich Village jazz bar with her boardinghouse roommate stretching three dollars as far as it will go when Tinker Grey, a handsome banker with royal blue eyes and a tempered smile, happens to sit at the neighboring table. This chance encounter and its startling consequences propel Katey on a yearlong journey from a Wall Street secretarial pool toward the upper echelons of New York society and the executive suites of Condé Nast–rarefied environs where she will have little to rely upon other than a bracing wit and her own brand of cool nerve.

Wooed in turn by a shy, principled multi-millionaire, and an irrepressible Upper East Side ne’er-do-well, befriended by a single-minded widow who is ahead of her time, and challenged by an imperious mentor, Katey experiences firsthand the poise secured by wealth and station and the failed aspirations that reside just below the surface. Even as she waits for circumstances to bring Tinker back into her life, she begins to realize how our most promising choices inevitably lay the groundwork for our regrets.
 

 
 

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** This post first appeared on Every Free Chance Books (everyfreechance.com) on January 27, 2019.