Table for Two: Fictions showcases the writing talents of Amor Towles in a collection of short stories. There are six short stories that are centered around New York City and a novella that takes place in 1930’s Los Angeles that is a sequel to a previous work entitled Rules of Civility..
Although Towles does limit the setting a bit to mostly New York toward the beginning of the current century.
I find the best stories are The Ballad of Timothy Tochett, The Bootlegger, and The DiDomenico Fragment. The other three stories The Line, Hasta Luego, and I will Survive are pretty good as well. Each story is pretty engaging in its own way. I would have preferred a little more variety in the settings, but Towles does kind show enough variety in his stories and characters to keep me engaged.’
The novella, Eve in Hollywood, has an interesting time and place since it is at the perfect Evelyn Ross has arrived in California and come across an interesting array of people, including a famous Hollywood actress who has become the target of an insidious blackmail scheme. This one does seem a little long to be considered a novella. Also, it’s one of those tales written without quotation marks. Towles seems to take his cue from Cormac McCarthy by using hyphens to signify dialogue. The climax of the story gets pretty good and is reminiscent of the more noirish works of Raymond Chandler or Dashiell Hammett.
Sometimes, a good sampling of shorter works is a nice sidestep on my literary indulgences. Some stories are better than others, but there is nothing in the collection that was too exasperating.
Towles is a solid writer, but he seems to take his time between books. Until the next one comes out, I would encourage any curious readers to have a seat at this particular table and savor some fine literary cuisine.
It’s time to sit in with a most unusual group of sleuths known as the Thursday Murder Club in Richard Osman’s The Bullet That Missed.
