Rules of Civility by Amor Towles

      Suffice it to say I read this book in twenty-four hours. I honestly felt like I had fallen down the proverbial Rabbit Hole and ended up back in Prep School. Granted the novel takes place in the 1930's in Manhattan, but the characters were interchangeable with those with whom I grew up. Delightful, frightening and oh so observant of the "Social Class", Mr. Towles hits the wicket with extreme ease. Part F.S. Fitzgerald, part Edith Wharton, Amor Towles rolicks the reader into the High Society that was New York  after the Crash. Characters are oh-so flawed, oh-so perfect and oh-so relevant in today's culture of "reality shows", economic uncertainty and the attitudes of those "Titans of Industry "and "Hedge Fund Wizards"  towards rest of us who cannot afford eight hundred dollar Christian Louboutins  and Hermes Birkin bags. I went to school with these people, I saw their insouciance to the world around them, unless of course it was a black tie benefit to attend. There, the men in their tuxes with inherited cufflinks and shirt studs and the women in their understated diamonds and pearls wearing perfectly fitted gowns with a mere hint of decollete  could drink wine, eat canapes and pretend that the money they were raising for some far-flung charity was more than what the  actual event with it's heavy linens, top shelf liquor and imported floral centerpieces cost. This is the world that Amor Towles creates in his fascinating and spot on depiction of Society in the 30's. His gift for understanding and dissecting this higher stratosphere is akin to the late great Domminic Dunne who wrote searing but ultimately entertaining stories of the upper class in the later part of the twentieth century; their foibles, downfalls and highlights. Although Rules of Civility is relatively short in terms of a novel it is packed full of wonderful prose, great characterizations and a spot on dissection of Society. In short, read this book.