This is a delightful book, a thought experiment, if you will, about an aristocrat who remained in Moscow, after the revolution, neither executed nor fleeing, and looking at the influence he exerted over his surroundings, being a gentleman, the sensibility he brought to everyday things and happenings, and looking at the changes taking place in Russia through his eyes.
Towles has a light touch; tragedy is but gently touched upon, you get the pathos without the gore.
But one my favourite passages in this book has to do with his change in philosophy over the years...as an aristocrat he went out of his way to spare himself trouble in little things. As an adult, he saw that the things that gave him trouble were what made his life worth living.
"I'll tell you what is convenient," he said after a moment. "To sleep until noon and have someone bring you breakfast on a tray. To cancel an appointment at the very last minute. To keep a carriage waiting at the door of one party, so that on a moment's notice it can whisk you away to another. To sidestep marriage in your youth and put off having children altogether. These are the greatest of conveniences, Anushka - - and at one time, I had them all. But in the end, it has been the Inconveniences that have mattered to me the most."
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