A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles
I have to say, this was delightful. It chronicles decades of the life of Count Alexander Rostov, under house arrest in the Metropol Hotel–but somehow, barely leaving the building, it’s full of adventure. Adventure arrives–people enter from the world–but largely, he makes it himself.
The book is old-fashioned–it is in possession of a third-person narrator prone to making observations about general truths, for instance–but in a way that feels comfortable, not stodgy. It plays explicitly with the tropes of Russian literature, invoking Chekhov and Tolstoy repeatedly. It is long, and concerns itself wit human experience not defined by time or place. And it simply tells stories.
Amy P. Knight 