Friend Eve is found by the police, passed out drunk in an alley. As if to make up for this lapse, Towles rather hurriedly introduces a couple of sex scenes toward the end of the book, pointedly initiated by Katey, not by her gentlemen lovers. The fact that Katey and her friends consume a great deal of alcohol makes this all the odder. She spends the night in the same apartment with gentlemen friends on several occasions and they don’t make even the most tentative pass at her it is as though sexuality is simply not part, either in thought or in deed, of this otherwise appealing young woman’s experience. But Katey’s femaleness is undermined by the fact that she never thinks about sex, never has to resist it and never encounters it. It is always a challenge for a male author to create a viable female character whose first- person consciousness narrates an entire novel, and Towles does this quite well. For a woman in her mid-20s living in New York, first in a boarding house and then in her own apartment, Katey is remarkably asexual. The book is saved from what could be clichéd performances by these smooth young people through Katey’s witty assessments of their long and short suits, both emotional and sartorial. Later, back in 1938, we wander into penthouses and parties in the company of seemingly endless numbers of wealthy, educated people with waspy nicknames ― Dickey, Bitsy, Tinker, Wyss ― as they pursue what appear to be relatively empty but nonetheless very pleasant lives. The preface, which takes place in the Museum of Modern Art in 1966, is especially lovely the civility here seems appropriate, with subtle undertones. Eve eventually catches this seemingly wealthy aristocrat, but that does not end Katey’s relationship with him as a friend and someone who fascinates her then and years later. He not only produces the requisite champagne but captivates both women. Katey and her very close and eccentric friend Eve, set to spend New Year’s Eve of 1937-38 without champagne in a downtown nightclub, unexpectedly encounter a very classy young man in an expensive beaver coat. I wondered how a young woman brought up in Brooklyn by working-class immigrant parents had become an expert in art, contemporary music, New York’s restaurants, syntax and the mellifluous use of the English language, but could not help but admire her for these skills anyway.

Her boundless talents, while sometimes striking the reader as unlikely, are sparkling and gracious.

Katey Kontent (accent on the second syllable please) does it all. It is hard not to be captivated by the narrator of this trip through the year 1938 in Manhattan.

Rules of civility review