Oxmoor Page Turners is a book group and meets April 10th at 6:30 p.m. We pick one title per month from various fiction and nonfiction writers.  Snacks are served at each meeting.  Come join us!!

Our pick for April 2018 is  A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles

American novelist Amor Towels enjoyed writing during his childhood. He grew up in Boston, graduated from Yale, and received a M.A. in English from Stanford University.  As a young adult, he moved to New York City where he tried various jobs:  bartender, waiter, fact checker.  Not finding the right fit, he joined a friend to start an investment advising firm.  The venture worked, and the company was successful for over 20 years.

Towels revisited his love for writing, and began writing again in his late 30s.  His first book, Rules of Civility was published in 2011 and was quickly listed as a New York Times best seller.  The book was successful, and Towles was able to retire and write full-time.  The next title was Eve in Hollywood , which follows one of the characters from the previous book.

The inspiration for his third book, Gentleman in Moscow, came while traveling to Switzerland for business.  Business took him consistently to the same hotel.  Once, he noticed he meeting the same people each trip, and discovered they lived in the hotel.  Towles envisioned what it might be like to live in a hotel for the rest of his life.

Gentleman in Moscow was published in 2016, and instantly was listed on New York Times best seller list, spending over 40 weeks in hardcover.  The book has been published in various languages and has been opted as a tv mini series.  One of the recipes from the book inspired book clubs to explore Russian cuisine and bring them to meetings.

Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles

A Gentleman in Moscow immerses us in another elegantly drawn era with the story of Count Alexander Rostov. When, in 1922, he is deemed an unrepentant aristocrat by a Bolshevik tribunal, the count is sentenced to house arrest in the Metropol, a grand hotel across the street from the Kremlin. Rostov, an indomitable man of erudition and wit, has never worked a day in his life, and must now live in an attic room while some of the most tumultuous decades in Russian history are unfolding outside the hotel’s doors. Unexpectedly, his reduced circumstances provide him a doorway into a much larger world of emotional discovery. 

Brimming with humor, a glittering cast of characters, and one beautifully rendered scene after another, this singular novel casts a spell as it relates the count’s endeavor to gain a deeper understanding of what it means to be a man of purpose.