Grumbling school kids have been coming in for their last-minute summer reading. Those assigned Wuthering Heights are the worst complainers. The Emily Bronte novel seems to have a dubious reputation among students, who approach the book with fear and confusion. You'd think they were assigned Finnegan's Wake.
It prompted a discussion among the staff about Wuthering Heights. It's too stately and mannered, one clerk insisted. Not enough grit and rudeness.
Others disagreed. It's got plenty of grit, torture, passion and drama, it's just concealed under stuffy old English formality and ambiguity, depicting a time of rigid social convention. Manners and decorum are out of fashion today, so contemporary literature says what it wants, no matter how titillating or explicit. But sometimes it's nice to hold back a little, to tease the reader, let him or her fill in the blanks.
Maybe that's why we enjoyed Rules of Civility, the debut novel by Amor Towles, currently buzzing in the book world. Earning comparisons to The Great Gatsby and other Jazz Age literature, Towles' novel is told from the perspective of a young woman on the fringes of Manhattan high society. She's a secretary by day, and by night she goes out with her tart-tongued girlfriend, hitting all the swanky clubs and sipping martinis to the big bands.
On New Year's Eve, the two friends run into a dashing gentleman who wines and dines them through the city's finest bars and restaurants. The triangle begins to buckle as unexpressed passions arise. Who will get the guy? A twist of fate decides, and the book plunges through the fall out, the rebirth, the parties and favors and social manueverings as our lovable heroine ascends in the most happening place in post-Depression America.
Through high and low times, sadness and tragedy, the novel remains upbeat with a swinging gait and sizzling prose. If you like your tales mannered with a touch of the high life, you'll swoon over this one.
