Book Review: Rules of Civility (2011). Amor Towles.

This is Amor Towles's first novel, written as a first-person account of the life of an aspiring young woman from the lower classes, who dives into the social life of the wealthy in late 1930s Manhattan.  

It contains wonderful, evocative descriptions of the people, places and social behavior of the American Yankee aristocratic class (and particularly of the young people) at that time, when the Depression was still recent history and the calamity of World War II was just ahead.  

It also nicely depicts the way in which for so many of us, our twenties are the time when who we ultimately will become in life as adults is shaped and molded by our experiences, the people we meet then, and the historical events around us.  Highly recommended.