TABLE FOR TWO
BY AMOR TOWLES
451 pages
Amor Towles fans are in for a treat this summer with this recently released collection of six short tales and a novella whose story origins were first penned before the bestselling author wrote ‘A Gentleman in Moscow’.
Readers will feel instantly at home with Amor Towles as the first short story in ‘Table for Two’ starts in Russia in the early twentieth century after a new constitution and republic had been formed. This story instantly captures the daily struggles and hardships of life, queuing for basic amenities as experienced by Pushkin, a country peasant, who heads to Moscow with his wife and then journeys to America thanks to a mixture of good luck and fortune. And thanks to being in the right place, at the right time!
There are five other stories in ‘Table for Two’ fast forwarding the reader to post millennium New York City. Similarly, they all hinge on chance encounters and unexpected opportunities which gives fans the chance to enjoy the author’s craft and imagination with his finely drawn characters. Towles packs a punch of a story that you know will be filled with misadventures, humour and life lessons whilst heading towards amusing plot twists.
The second half of the book, 'Eve in Hollywood' takes the reader West Coast to ‘Golden Age Hollywood’ and Towles delights his readers by returning to one of his characters, the fiery Evelyn Ross from his debut novel ‘Rules of Civility’ who leaves New York in 1938 with the intention of returning home to Indiana. But instead of meeting her parents in Chicago she extends her ticket to LA. Told from various points of views, the reader enjoys Eve’s new life, navigating movie sets and dive bars whilst befriending a young Olivia de Havilland (just before her ‘Gone with the Wind’ fame) who joins her on her own bucket list of adventures in LA whilst protecting the young actress from the dangers lurking in the the darker side of Hollywood's Tinseltown.
Whether read in book club or as summer time treat, this is the perfect bedside book for Towles fans.