Impossibly glamorous, RULES OF CIVILITY takes in 1930s New York with a dry martini and a side order of sharp-tongued wit. with vintage period detail verging on the nostalgic, it's a stylish tale of ambitious, wisecracking gals on the make in Manhattan...With love at its heart (love lost, regained, betrayed and shared), this book is so much more than the ... Read moresum of its parts as it takes in ambition, manner and the American Dream along the way. Where it excels is not letting the style become its only substance...Rules of Civility has the feel of a classic, one that's as rich in story as in nostalgia and love for New York...With crackling prose, a compelling story and a beautiful way with words, this clever and sassy book is not only dull of charm, it's shockingly good fun too.
Fiction Uncovered
Rattles along at the pace of a riotous night out in the book's vividly evoked Manhattan. It is atmospheric, satisfying Great Gatsby-lite complete, with fish-out-of-water first-person narration, country house parties and a fabulously wealthy male protagonist who is not all that he seems.
Ben Hoyle, The Times
Even the most jaded New Yorker can see the beauty in Amor Towles' RULES OF CIVILITY the antiqued portrait of an unlikely jet set making the most of Manhattan.
San Francisco Chronicle
This book feels special...Towles was born to write
Sun Herald
Set against a soundtrack of clinking glasses and saxophones, the book is a love letter to the city and the era, so confidently written it instantly plunges you into Thirties New York. Towles creates a narrative that sparkles with sentences so beautiful you'll stop and re-read them. A delicious and memorable novel that will leave you wistful - and desperate for a martini
Stylist
...my book of the year. If the unthinkable happened and I could never read another new work of fiction in 2011, I'd simply re-read this sparkling, stylish book, with yet another round of martinis as dry as the author's wit
Jackie McGlone, Herald
Jazz-age New York is the setting for martinis and girls on the make in Rules of Civility by Amor Towles. As glamorous as it is gut-wrenching, this is the summer's must-read
ELLE
Because who doesn't want to be transported to Thirties Manhattan?
Lucy Mangan
Irresistible... A cross between Dorothy Parker and Holly Golightly, Katey Kontent is a priceless narrator in her own right - the brains of a bluestocking with the legs of a flapper and the mores of Carrie Bradshaw
Elena Seymenliyska, Telegraph
This is a flesh-and-blood tale you believe in, with fabulous period detail. It's all too rare to find a fun, glamorous, semi-literary tale to get lost in... While you're lost in the whirl of silk stockings, fur and hip flasks, all you care about is what Katey Kontent does next
Viv Groskop, Observer
Terrific. A smart, witty, charming dry-martini of a novel
David Nicholls, author of One Day
The summer's must-read: gripping and beautiful
Sunday Times
Achingly stylish...witty, slick production, replete with dark intrigue, period details, and a suitably Katharine Hepburn-like heroine
Guardian
Impossibly glamorous . . . Towles conjures up vintage New York so marvellously that it made me feel nostalgic for a place I've never been to.
The Times
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