Read This Book If You Want to Understand the Significance of Your Young Adulthood
Rules of Civility by Amor Towles
There are these one or two famous adages, or a million, that gush over the possibility of reinventing yourself—your age and circumstance no matter. Sure, possible. But what’s the likelihood?
Near zero?
Something like it, based on my interpretation of the protagonist of Rules of Civility, Katey/Katya/Katherine Kontent (emphasis on the é, as she was quick to point out on more than one occasion — more on this below), written by Amor Towles.
A dear friend of mine recommended it to me, texting me saying, “I just finished ‘Rules of Civility,’ and you absolutely have to give it a read. It whispered your name while I was reading.”
If that’s not a worthwhile endorsement, I don’t know what is.
I picked up the book last month, and to the detriment of the graying and fading edges of my physical copy, increasingly wearied with the grittiness of the dozens of Manhattan coffee shop tables and subway stops and park benches the book found itself on, I would often have to put it down, close the book, and my eyes, because I needed to emotionally savor the increasing beauty of the pages within. To digest the matter-of-fact, but beautiful sentences. This putting-it-down-to-digest happened frequently, because I wanted to figure out what felt so gripping in a book that’s not really plot-driven or particularly riveting. I couldn’t pinpoint it.
But I could tell right off the bat that the book is alluring, in the same way the city is. Nonchalantly. Inexplicably. Born to play the leading role. And in that sense, the book is a perfect, worthy ode to New York. It doesn’t try to chase after an embellished description of the place. Nor does it shy away from depicting it for what it is, in all its grit and glory.