Rules of Civility, by Amor Towles

Characters

Katey Kontent Valentine – husband in 1966   Eve Ross – roommate at Miss Martingale’s   Theodore (Tinker) Grey Henry (Hank) Gray - painter Anne Grandyn   Quiggin and Hale – law firm Miss Markham – head secretary Charlotte Sykes – new girl   Nathaniel Parish – fiction editor, Pembroke Press   Mason Tate – starting new magazine, Gotham Alley McKenna – competitor for job   Wallace Wolcott Dicky Vanderwhile Bitsy and Jack Houghton   Fran Pacelli – friend from Miss Martingale’s

For discussion:

NOTE: The page numbers refer to the hardback edition.

1. How do you think the story would have changed if the accident had never happened?

2. Discuss each of the main characters.  Could you connect with some more than others?  Why?

• Why did Eve refuse to go home to her parents?  Consider how she dealt with the accident and her subsequent disability.
• Consider Anne and Tinker's relationship and Tinker's decisions.
• Discuss Wallace and the following:
• His habit of pausing in the middle of sentences when he talked that disappeared with talking with other businessmen and during dinner at the hunting club with Katey.
• His comment that his successful twenties were his father's fifties.
• Knowing all the servant and trade peoples' first names.
• His feeling that he had not earned what he had.

3. Discuss Katey's career path, particularly the fact that she quit Quiggen and Hale as soon as she was promoted.  Why did she quit?  How did that decision change her life?

4. Discuss the pronunciation of Katey's last name - Kontent vs. Kontent.  Did you like the way the author played with the pronunciation throughout the book?  (see page 19)

5. On page 37 the author wrote "...be careful when choosing what you're proud of - because the world has every intention of using it against you" and used Charlotte Sykes' typing skill as an example.  Do you agree?  Do you have any examples from your or other's lives?

6. Katey found great pleasure in reading.  On page 128 she stated that"...if after finishing a chapter of a Dicken's novel I feel a miss-my-stop-on-the-train sort of compulsion to read on, then everything is probably going to be just fine."  Can you relate?  When was the last time you had that feeling?

7. On the same page, Katey reflected on the pleasure of simple things and how the loss of appreciating these pleasures is dangerous.  Do you agree?  What simple pleasures are important to you?

8. Also on the subject of reading, Katey discovered Agatha Christie and said that, "Her books are tremendously satisfying.  Yes, they are formulaic.  But that's one of the reasons they are so satisfying."  What books do you find satisfying in that way?  What books have you liked because they are not formulaic?  How would you categorize this book?

9. Katey compared life to a journey where decisions we make along the way alter our life's course and then to a card game where we must decide what to do with each card until the deck is done (page 323).  How does this describe her life?  Does it describe yours?  What decisions have you made that altered your life's course?

10. Did you like the inclusion of Rules of Civility and Decent Behaviour that was followed by George Washington?  How did Tinker's life follow these rules?  How did it not?

11. Discuss the writing.  Did you enjoy it?  What were your favorite phrases?  Here are some of mine:

• Page 40 - description of a sandwich, "a little too long on adjectives and little too short on specific."
• Page 78 - "waiting to hoi polloi home"
• Page 79 - "It is a lovely oddity of human nature that a person is more inclined to interrupt two people in conversation than one person alone with a book."
• Page 80 - "I let the silence grow awkward"

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