Skip to main content

Rules of Civility

Bookreporter.com Bets On...

Rules of Civility

September 2011

RULES OF CIVILITY by Amor Towles is a smart escapist novel. It’s beautifully written, with great visual prose that will have you dropped right into 1938. It opens in a jazz bar on New Year’s Eve when Katey Kontent and her friend Eve meet Tinker Grey, a bon vivant banker. The book looks at what happens to these characters over the next year, as Katey drops into a world of wealth and status, including a job at Conde Nast (which the ex-magazine girl in me loved reading about). But what looks so rich and so shiny has an underside that is not what it seems. And Katey, who is quite plucky, navigates her way through this year becoming wiser and wiser.

If you enjoyed THE GREAT GATSBY or THE PARIS WIFE, RULES OF CIVILITY has that same kind of rich descriptive writing and “go-go” spirit that makes you feel like you are at the party. Heads up that there are LOTS of cocktails mentioned in the book, especially ones with gin in them. I am not much of a drinker, but found myself craving a gin and tonic as I read! This is the first book in a while that I can see myself wanting to re-read again at a later date. I enjoyed it that much.

Rules of Civility
by Amor Towles

  • Publication Date: June 26, 2012
  • Genres: Fiction, Historical Fiction
  • Paperback: 368 pages
  • Publisher: Penguin Books
  • ISBN-10: 0143121162
  • ISBN-13: 9780143121169