'Table for Two' by Amor Towles

While walking the Chester Valley Trail (3 miles) we will discuss Table for Two by Amor Towles (fiction, 451 pages, 13 hrs audio).

Park at the Penn Medicine Valley Forge parking lot, 1001 Chesterbrook Blvd, Berwyn, PA. Meet at the trailhead. In the event of rain, we will meet at the trailhead, and then decide on moving indoors.

Amor Towles (author of The Lincoln Highway, A Gentleman in Moscow, and Rules of Civility) shares some of his shorter six stories set in New York City and a novella in Los Angeles. The New York stories, most of which are set around the turn of the millennium, take up everything from the death-defying acrobatics of the male ego, to the fateful consequences of brief encounters, and the delicate mechanics of compromise which operate at the heart of modern marriages.

In Towles’s novel, Rules of Civility, the indomitable Evelyn Ross leaves New York City in September, 1938, with the intention of returning home to Indiana. But as her train pulls into Chicago, where her parents are waiting, she instead extends her ticket to Los Angeles. Told from seven points of view, “Eve in Hollywood” describes how Eve crafts a new future for herself—and others—in the midst of Hollywood’s golden age. Throughout the stories, two characters often find themselves sitting across a table for two where the direction of their futures may hinge upon what they say to each other next.