When I learned in April that Towles had a new book out, so soon (within a year) of his previous (The Lincoln Highway), I was just a little excited. And so, I invoked one of the exceptions to my book-buying prohibition (a new book by a favourite author) and bought it almost immediately. Then I waited for a suitable period of downtime to dive in, so I could read it uninterrupted. A June staycation did the trick, and the book was a blissful start those days off.
The book includes six short stories and a novella spun out of Towles’ first novel, The Rules of Civility. The short stories are superb, each of them creating engaging characters and situations. First up is “The Line”, a tragic-comic story about a couple from Moscow in the aftermath of the start of Soviet Russia, and the emergent culture of waiting in line as a quasi-profession. The couple ends up in New York, where five remaining stories take place. While I enjoyed them all*, my favourites were “I Will Survive”, which has an audible OMG moment, and “Bootlegger”, which brought me to tears.
The novella, “Eve in Hollywood”, reveals what happened to the Eve that left New York in the earlier novel. The story is quirky and fun, with wonderful touches of old-world Hollywood and a Hammett-lite mystery story. The characters are terrific – eccentric but believable – and Eve seems to have found a home and family in this new world, with Hollywood providing the glamour of the new, the other end of the spectrum from New York.
I’m very glad I have this book and to have used this quiet time to savour it. I’m now just a bit sad that there will likely be an even longer wait for more Towles to come.
Fate: Will stay with me on my shelf of Towles’ small but mighty oeuvre.
1 – book with a murder
4 – published in 2024
15 – a number in the title
18 – short stories
*Aside: the story, “The Ballad of Timothy Touchett” was so familiar to me that I stopped reading after a few pages to search out the one that it reminded me of. Except, I couldn’t find it. In the Towles story, Touchett is a young wannabe writer who ends up working in a small and definitely not high-end used bookshop, where he ends up in a profitable scheme with the bookshop’s owner. The story I was reminded of went like this:
A young wannabe writer works in a small and definitely not high-end used bookshop, one with a very distinctive interior. At the back of the shop, the owner works in his office overlooking the store, and there is an elderly woman working there who handles the accounts. The ceiling of the shop is draped with red silky cloth, giving the shop an inviting glamour and mystique. One day, the clerk is bored of the slow work of the shop and sets fire to the ceiling cloth before leaving. Several years later, he learns that the shop did not burn down, but remained in operation. He makes a return visit; the owner has died and (I think) left the shop to him. He finds that nothing has been altered – the ragged burned cloth hangs from the ceiling, making the interior now a dingy and dusty relic, albeit still open for business. The elderly woman is even more elderly but still at work, at her desk cluttered with papers and receipts. He takes over the business.
I spent several hours and many other moments trying to find or remember where I read that story, but to no avail. I cannot have made it up (can I?) but I cannot find it anywhere. Any hints or ideas are welcome.
rclr 