Table For Two Summary

Table For Two Overview

Amor Towles' short story collection Table for Two contains seven fictions, set primarily in New York and Los Angeles, that are largely concerned with the interrelations of friends, romantic partners, and strangers. "The Line" follows a married couple from Communist Russia; "The Ballad of Timothy Touchett" concerns an aspiring young writer who inadvertently becomes a prolific forger; "Hasta Luego" follows two men who meet in an airport when their flights home are grounded; "I Will Survive" concerns one woman's efforts to confirm whether her stepfather is cheating on her mother; "The Bootlegger" revolves around one man's regretful decision to inform the authorities of an old man making bootleg recordings of the concerts at Carnegie Hall; "The DiDomenico Fragment" follows an art dealer as he attempts to defraud his own family of a precious painting; and "Eve in Hollywood," a novella, details the travails of a mysterious woman named Evelyn Ross following her arrival in Los Angeles. Although the stories are distinct from one another, and their plots do not overlap, there are commonalities between them, and the stories often serve as mirrors or counterpoints to one another as they explore a variety of themes, including drive and ambition, love and marriage, wealth and class, gender and discrimination, and age and relevance.