Table for Two: Fictions

📚 Why We Recommend It

Two tables, two worlds—Amor Towles weaves them into a tapestry of quiet revelation in Table for Two. One sits in a Montparnasse café, where writer Paul and his artist wife, Ruth, linger over coffee, their conversations meandering like Parisian streets: unfinished manuscripts, the slow fade of familiarity, how time softens the edges of “being together.” The other is a private dining room in Manhattan, where retired banker Walter toasts his niece’s engagement, the polite chatter masking family ghosts—an old secret, an unspoken apology, a chance to mend what’s broken.

Towles writes with the lazy rhythm of a jazz solo, letting the two tales hum in harmony. No grand drama here, just the weight of small moments: the steam off a latte, the clink of silverware, the pause before a sentence that says more than words. It’s a study of connection—how we drift from those we love, how silence can hold more tenderness than speech, how memory ties us to the past even as we reach for the present.

This isn’t a book to race through; it’s to savor, like a long meal with good company. Open it, and you’ll find yourself sliding into a seat at both tables, listening to their stories while recognizing your own. Because in the end, Towles reminds us, all the big truths about love and loss live in the little, unremarkable moments.