At last!

I believe I may have written previously about my struggle to find contemporary novels that I like. As a youngster my reading was concentrated on novels from the past, mostly early twentieth century, from authors such as E. M. Forster, Aldous Huxley, and John Wyndham. There were a few contemporaneous (to me at the time) authors I read in the late twentieth century, particularly J. G. Ballard, Anthony Burgess, and A. S. Byatt. But ever since, my forays into current works have generally been disappointing, as some of the reviews I’ve posted here testify.

I’ve not been alone in this, but not so long ago a friend who felt the same put me on to a novelist she had found that bucked the apparent trend for careless plotting, wooden characters and generally rather poor quality writing. His name is Amor Towles, and the book she had read was ‘A Gentleman in Moscow’. I looked out for it the next time I was in a bookshop. They didn’t have it, but they had two others by the same author, and I chose to buy ‘Rules of Civility’, which follows the progress of a young woman in New York in the Jazz age years, before WW2.

As you can see from my review on Goodreads here, I rather liked it. So much so, in fact, that when I saw his latest in a bookshop in Crickhowell (on a short break in the Brecon Beacons) I bought that too. ‘Table For Two’ is a collection of short stories. The book looks impressive, with the edges of the pages dipped in black ink (which, on the other hand, could be seen as un unnecessary use of ink, and environmentally damaging). I’m looking forward to starting it, although sadly, despite now having retired from the day job, I don’t as yet seem to have much time spare for things like reading.

Towles’ use of English was sometimes unfamiliar, with some colloquial American (New York?) words I didn’t know, but that just added to the interest. The quality of his writing was high, it ‘read well’, without any awkward phraseology leaving me struggling to discern meaning. The level of description was just right, and done efficiently and effectively. The chapters did read a little like a series of vignettes, rather than a cohesive story, but that didn’t detract from my enjoyment, and I felt I was in the hands of a talented storyteller.

So, a success. My mission now is to find other authors whose work I can enjoy reading.