Thursday, January 20, 2022

Book 0 - A Gentleman in Moscow

I finished reading A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles. I took way too long. It's a great book actually and I like it a lot. There will be a lot of spoilers in this post, so stop reading if you want to read the book which I am totally recommending. I myself got to read this book because it was on Obama's book list. Anyways, A Gentleman in Moscow tells a story of a Russian Count who was put under a hotel arrest. The reason of his arrest is hard to be reasoned with. Let's just say that at that time Russia was undergoing revolution (side note: I don't have any Russian history knowledge at all) and aristocrats were being wiped out. When the Count was sentenced, there's no end date on when he could get out, so he practically had to spend his entire life in the hotel. He moved from his spacious and luxurious suite to a small room in the attic. The count began his sentence at the age of 33, but thankfully he had experienced a bit of life before his arrest. One would think that being confined to a luxury hotel and having money during it would not be so bad, definitely not as bad as the Russians who were sent to the gulag, however as you see other people going about their lives and you stay stuck, well you can imagine that it will bring one spirits down. On his lowest moment something happened, something that I can only describe as God still having things to show and amuse him, and that caused him to literally walk away from the ledge and find a new way of living.

Another life-changing moment for the Count was when a woman who he knew as a child in the hotel entrusted him with her daughter. This part of the story had its sad moment for me (who tend to look at the downside of things). The girl's mom was never mentioned again and we don't know what happened to her parents. The Count, however, ended up having a fulfilling life as a father to this child and as he said, it made the whole experience of being confined to the hotel meaningful and he wouldn't change it for anything. While he was able to come to terms with his life, he didn't want the girl to live a restricted life and he seized an opportunity to give the girl freedom away from Russia. Without the girl, he also realized that it's time for him to leave the hotel and he also plotted his escape. He spent 32 years in the hotel by the time he left. That's a long time for someome to have their life be constricted. In the end though and this is something that I could relate with, despite "Russia" unfairly taking away his life and the lives of many people he knew, he decided to stay in Russia. There is this illogical love for country that I get, because I feel that. There's always question if Indonesia loves all her people equally for example people with my background, but at the end of the day I am still choosing to be Indonesian.

:) eKa @ 8:26:00 PM •