rules-of-civility
Best Thing: Reviewers often praise "Rules of Civility" for its rich character development and engaging storytelling, highlighting how the narrative beautifully captures the essence of New York City in the 1930s. Worst Thing: Some readers criticize the pacing of the book, mentioning that it can feel slow or meandering at times, which detracts from the overall experience.
Plot & Themes
New York City, 1937–38. Katey Kontent, a working-class Brooklyn typist with literary ambitions, navigates one transformative year alongside her roommate Eve Ross and the seemingly self-made banker Tinker Grey. A New Year’s Eve meeting in a Greenwich Village jazz club ripples outward into Café Society penthouses, Adirondack weekends, and Brooklyn boarding houses. The novel takes its title from George Washington’s 110 youthful rules of civility, and Tinker’s worn copy of them reveals more about him than his Park Avenue address ever did.
Themes:
- Class and self-reinvention in pre-war Manhattan — what you decide to become in a city that asks no questions about where you came from
- The cost of fashioning a self — Tinker’s manufactured persona set against Katey’s quieter authenticity
- Female ambition in a literary-finance world where women are meant to be accessories, not authors of their own arc
- The pivot of a single choice — a year hinges on which man she goes home with from a bar on the first night
- Civility as armor vs. virtue — Washington’s rules read as both the disguise and the aspiration
- Towles’ Manhattan as moral landscape — jazz clubs, boarding-house breakfasts, and Park Avenue salons as different gravitational fields for the same young woman
— Drafted from external sources; review and edit to make your own.
“In moments of high emotion — if the next thing you’re going to say makes you feel better, then it’s probably the wrong thing to say. This is one of the finer maxims that I’ve discovered in life. And you can have it since it’s been of no use to me.”