Books: From Moscow To Acadiana

Intriguing Reads from Here and Abroad

By Raymond “Ray” Saadi — Book Editor

 

A GENTLEMAN IN MOSCOW

By Amor Towles (Viking $27)

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An absolutely wonderful novel despite the fact it concerns a man sentenced to spend his life confined to an attic room in a hotel. But not just any hotel, the Metropol, Russia’s finest across the street from the Kremlin. And not just an ordinary prisoner; 30-year-old Count Alexander Rostov, turns the tables on his Bolshevik captors by uncannily adapting to his impoverished surroundings. He soon is enjoying the company and tastings of the hotel chef along with the finest wines in the hotel as well as a beautiful actress with whom he bonds easily. His life is untroubled until fate puts the life of a young girl in his hands.Filled with moments of pathos, humor and characters not easily forgotten.  

 

THE CANE FIELDS ARE BURNING

by William O. Bonin

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Bonin, at 86, a retired New Iberia attorney, writes a mystery that could almost be autobiographical as he and his protagonist both suffer from asthma complicated by the practice of farmers burning their cane fields each fall. When his fictional lawyer sues a big farmer, and soon after, is killed in a head-on crash with one of the farmer’s truck, you might ask, was it accident or murder?