上流法则 – Rules of Civility by Amor Towles

爱情与面包，你会选 哪一个？

人生没有永远正确的答案……

30年代末的纽约 ，大萧条进入尾声，尚无战争威胁，一片祥和下，一群年轻人在这里寻找自己的理想和爱情。满腹诗书、冷静睿智的平民姑娘凯蒂•康腾和她的室友伊芙在爵士酒吧里邂逅了一位高贵又迷人的年轻银行家廷克。凯蒂爱上了廷克 ，然而一场车祸彻底改变了她的人生。

与廷克的相遇，让凯蒂就此进入曼哈顿上层社会。她一脚踏进纽约各界精英交际圈，一脚跨入名声显赫的大型出版集团，开启了一整年充满惊奇与疯狂的际遇。

跟腼腆的百万富翁约会，和开朗的上东区公子哥交往，与精明的女巨贾对峙，被专横的上司施压……凯蒂泰然自若地在各种命运的表象中摇曳前行，却发现爱情渐行渐远。在对无望之爱的期待里，她终于明白，指向“正确”的选择往往裹挟着失落之痛。

本书如同写给曼哈顿的一封情书，精致、优雅、幽默、清新。

On the last night of 1937, twenty-five-year-old Katey Kontent is in a second-rate Greenwich Village jazz bar with her boardinghouse roommate stretching three dollars as far as it will go when Tinker Grey, a handsome banker with royal blue eyes and a tempered smile, happens to sit at the neighboring table. This chance encounter and its startling consequences propel Katey on a yearlong journey from a Wall Street secretarial pool toward the upper echelons of New York society and the executive suites of Condé Nast—rarefied environs where she will have little to rely upon other than a bracing wit and her own brand of cool nerve.

Wooed in turn by a shy, principled multi-millionaire, and an irrepressible Upper East Side ne’er-do-well, befriended by a single-minded widow who is ahead of her time, and challenged by an imperious mentor, Katey experiences firsthand the poise secured by wealth and station and the failed aspirations that reside just below the surface. Even as she waits for circumstances to bring Tinker back into her life, she begins to realize how our most promising choices inevitably lay the groundwork for our regrets.

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