Rules of Civility

by Amor Towles (Author)

• Used

  Paperback
  2011

  $3.50

  In a jazz bar on the last night of 1937,
  watching a quartet because she couldn't afford to see the whole ensemble,
  there were certain things Katey Kontent knew:

  the location of every old church in Manhattan
  how to sneak into the cinema
  how to type eighty words a minute, five thousand an hour, and nine million a year
  and that if you can still lose yourself in the first chapter of a Dickens novel then everything is probably going to be fine.

  By the end of the year she'd learned:
  how to launch a paper airplane high over Park Avenue
  how to live like a redhead
  how to insist upon the very best
  that the word 'yes' can be a poison
  and the Rules of Civility.

  That's how quickly New York City comes about -
  like a weathervane - or the head of a cobra.
  Time tells which.