Table for Two: Fictions

The short stories were good although I struggled to find a definitive theme among them. The Novella was like a fish outta water and simply didn’t belong. As Sesame Street told us “..One of these things is not like the other” and this was it!! The novella was like it was homeless and took up shelter in this book. I say move along. Felt like just a filler for the books pages.

I really enjoy listening to this author’s books. He has the best readers. I do find it a little harder to read his books. He is very detailed and paints a beautiful picture of each of his settings and his character development is excellent. This book is half short stories and half novella. The novella is about a character from the book Rules of Civility, which I just happened to read before this. The short store reminded me a bit of the old Alfred Hitchcock hour show.

Chris's pick. 👍🏻 Short stories. Features a hard-boiled detective story featuring Evelyn, from Rules of Civility.

Love everything Amor Towles writes. This book is no exception. Some beautiful moments described so delightfully.

This book has two parts- short stories, and a novella. The stories are in his distinctive style; I loved them. A solid 10 for those. The novella is a continuation of his Evelyn character from 'Rules of Civility' - his only book that I didn't enjoy. Towles does not write female characters well. He somewhat compensated by jumping around to several characters, but we never got to know any of them as well as we'd like. The lead-up and character development were enjoyable; the climax just made me think, "Well, that escalated quickly..." The final recap had similarities with 'A Gentleman in Moscow' - without the investment of knowing the characters better, the twists and turns to the plot felt more like a dime store mystery.