A Gentleman in Moscow

​It is always difficult to fairly review any historical novel that wins awards, receives gushing reviews from the professional critics, as well as thousands of ordinary readers giving it 5 stars.
 
This is a long book I read in stages over several months, never quite sure what to make of it. I put it aside numerous times, usually after some passage that was so beautifully written it almost took my breath away, only to return later and read on with increasing annoyance at the improbability of the whole scenario.
 
While I was stewing over how best to express my frustrations, I discovered one other rather irate reviewer who felt the same as I did - he agreed that the writing was exquisite but was troubled by the impossible plot.

I was relieved that I wasn’t the only one to feel this way and I finally decided that for all its elegant prose, this book is troubling in that it does a disservice to history, to the millions of people who suffered and died under the Russian terrors of the early half of the 20th Century. We read a lot about the Count's wine and fine dining, we learn little of the wars, famine and oppression to which the Russian population was subjected during this momentous period in history.
 
The Russian Revolution happened in the first place because of the arrogant behaviour by members of its upper classes who included not only aristocrats, but all other cultured and educated individuals, be they merchants, artists or writers, and the vengeance of the revolutionaries did not discriminate when it came to their extermination.
 
The idea that one such gentleman would be allowed to reside - albeit in reduced yet genteel circumstances - in some grand hotel in the heart of the city is totally absurd. Even if this Count had hidden out in some remote Siberian village under a false identity, informers and spies were everywhere and the Cheka would still have dug him out and made him pay the price simply because of his rank and class.
 
The story with Nina is even more nonsensical. Just by associating with someone like the Count - or any “former people” - would have been a death sentence to her and her family, in addition to anyone even remotely connected to them; a neighbour, a shopkeeper who had served them. And as for a Bolshevik general taking English lessons from the Count … words fail me. The ending is also baffling, that the Count took thirty years to finally attempt an escape.

This book should only be read as a fairy story, or perhaps as some kind of fantastic allegory, and I hope to goodness is never put into some school curriculum as based on fact.
 
Yes, it deserves 5 stars for the quality of the prose but a black hole for its premise.
 



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