There is always someone who remembers details I didn’t notice! I was pretty sure that he had used a coin early on, but that once he started working he was paying his way. He could also have a bank account somewhere surely.
By the way @VeryHappy, the discussion ain’t over 'til it’s over, so feel free to share more thoughts. I just learned a lot in the last few posts. 
Yes, absolutely. I feel like this is a weak spot in the book. The “bad guys” would have included the Bishop, who would have tipped off the government in a minute. Is there some other way to look at this that I’m not considering?
Also: If he had money available through the banker Konstantin Konstantinovich, why was he moved to the crappy room on the sixth floor?
Am I nit picking??
The authorities made him move from his beautiful suite to the attic room. He broke through the closet wall to make his office.
IMO if you analyze this book too much, it falls apart. The Bolsheviks, in all likelihood, would not have put the Count under house arrest, they would have killed him along with the hundreds of other aristocrats. There were bloody purges of the upper classes throughout Russia when the Bolsheviks gained power. Lots of stories about the brutal murders of Tsar Nicholas II and his wife and children. The Bolsheviks weren’t nice guys.
To me–I said this before–the book is almost like a fairytale, and probably why the world outside the hotel rarely plays a part in the novel, except to set some parameters for the story. I loved the Count–I’m glad he survived the purges.
I agree, I didn’t feel that the book was terribly realistic, but I also didn’t feel it was meant to be. I think perhaps more of a parable than a fairy tale, but that’s just semantics. In many ways everyone in Russia was under house arrest, the Count’s version was more picturesque.
^ I agree as well. If you think too long on what it would really be like to raise a child when under house arrest, things begin to unravel a little. Granted, it’s the 1930s and 40s and not 2017, but even so…decades of clothing and school and doctors and (one would hope for Sofia’s sake) an occasional outing with a friend…Did Marina handle all that? But when my mind goes there, I have to stop, lest the story lose its charm.
Huh. I think I must have made the assumption that the hotel was sort of humoring the Count at first, and going through the motions of putting his expenses on his account. Then, with one of those jumps in time in the story, we learn the Count is actually working as a server. Again, I must have made the assumption that he was now expected to contribute.
I didn’t get the impression he was paying his way with his gold or bank account. I assume it would be confiscated if anyone in power thought he had a stash.
Funny how the mind fills in the blanks. I don’t have a copy of the book to check my memory.
Yes, agreed, not meant to be realistic. I was reeled right in.
I also assumed Marina was handling Sofia’s business outside of the hotel (school, etc.).
^^@Midwest67: I agree.
OK, all. I’ll back off trying to make too much sense out of things that should just be enjoyed!
^ Please don’t back off! It’s an important job. You know NJTheatreMOM would have happily picked the work to pieces.
@ignatius, did you read the book twice? If so, did any of your impressions change the second time around?
@VeryHappy Your questions are good ones. In the beginning I did the same thing–I wondered how the Count was paying for his lifestyle??? Very quicklly, I stopped thinking about that and like you said–just enjoyed the story.
I think Mathmom’s observation was a good one–in a way, everyone in Russia was under house arrest at that time.
I heard Towels speak about his work at a book festival where someone asked him if he studied/researched Russian history; his answer was “no”. He said his knowledege of Russia came from reading the great Russian writers (Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, Chekov).
^^^ Yes.
I thought the narrative was somewhat slow the first time I read it - less so the second, which is odd. I noted and enjoyed all the hints of what was to come … scattered throughout … almost from page 1 when I reread the book. Example: The Count never claims that he wrote the referenced poem, only that it was attributed to him. Your earlier comment
comes into play often and often subtly.
Hmmm. Maybe I’ll reread it. Knowing the ending, the beginning and the middle are likely to be much more meaningful.
I just skimmed the book again over the last several days and discovered a couple of new highlights I had missed before:
Very very early in the book, when Alexander has just been relocated to his 100-square-foot room on the sixth floor, he begins to read Montaigne’s essays. The first one he reads is called, “By Diverse Means We Arrive at the Same End,” and it discusses how to “soften the hearts of those we have offended” by “audacity and steadfastness.” This is what the Count’s behavior winds up being, and it annoys the Russian government no end!
It was right at the end of Book II that Alexander decides not to kill himself, when the handyman’s bees produce honey with the taste of the apples. And it’s right after that decision, in the last two paragraphs of Book II, that Alexander decides to be of service by waiting tables. "The following evening at six, when the Boyarsky opened, the Count was the first one through its doors. ‘Andrey,’ he said to the maitre d’. ‘Can you spare a moment . . . ?’ " And then at the beginning of Book III, he’s a waiter.
It is also in the same paragraph that he returns the gold coin he had had in his pocket (to pay the undertaker) to the leg of the desk, “where it would remain untouched for another twenty-eight years.” I am still somewhat confused about how the money thing happened – right before he intends to kill himself, he settles his accounts, through the Greek fellow – but later, when he figures out how to help Sofia leave, “for the first time in almost thirty years [he] opened one of the hidden doors in the legs of the Grand Duke’s desk.” So I’m not sure how the gold coins were turned into paying his expenses during the ensuing years, but again – I’m being too practical!
And finally, I totally missed this little twist the first time: “The Count was also right to worry that Sofia’s residency would be noted… . . Within a fortnight of her arrival a letter was sent to an administrative office within the Kremlin stating that a Former Person living under house arrest on the top floor of the Metropol Hotel was caring for a five-year-old child of unknown parentage.” The Kremlin winds up leaving the child alone because they think the child is Anna’s and is the illegitimate daughter of some member of the Politburo with whom Anna had a liaison! I thought that was hysterical.
I liked the Anna-Politburo liaison theory too.
My guess is that once he decides not to kill himself, he no longer needs to access the gold coins – because from then on, he lives on wages earned working at the Boyarsky.
The contrast between the coziness, friendships and gourmet restaurant etc. of the hotel vs. the chill and horror and meanness of the Communist world was really interesting to me. I was afraid it was going to be a bleak tell of hardship and sadness, well more sadness than we did see.
I loved this book. So imaginative and well written. Did it win any awards? It should have!
@VaBluebird: The perfect example of that was the night of the big meeting (when Khrushchev sat at the head of the table) and all the lights went out all over the city. Except at the Boyarsky, which was only lit by candlelight, so no one noticed anything different.
@VaBluebird, A Gentleman in Moscow was a finalist for the Kirkus Prize, although I don’t know how prestigious that is. It was sort of an odd collection of finalists – I never even heard of the winner, but maybe I’m just out of it: https://www.kirkusreviews.com/prize/2016/finalists/fiction/