This was the second book I read for the BookTube Prize 2022 Quarterfinals back in April-May. It’s another intimidating book as it’s lengthy and a little vague in its description. Like Cloud Cuckoo Land, The Lincoln Highway gave me an opportunity to try an author whose previous work has been widely lauded and recommended, but that I’ve never gotten through. I tried A Gentleman in Moscow, and it’s my mother’s favourite book, but so far I’ve never been able to actually finish it. No fault of the book, I just wasn’t in the right mood for it when I tried it.
This book is a simple story on the surface. It’s the story of Emmett, a young man – almost a boy, really – who has just been released from a detention centre and is going home to collect his little brother, Billy, so they can start a new life together. His father died while he was inside, and the family farm is being taken by the bank to cover his father’s debts. The only thing the boys own is a car. They decide together that they need to leave and try to find a new place to settle. Billy wants to head to California to look for their mother, and while Emmett doesn’t believe they will find her (or that she’ll want to be found in the first place), he can’t bring himself to refuse. So he plans their journey to encompass his brother’s mission.
As they’re preparing to leave, however, they find out that two fellow inmates from Emmett’s detention centre have stowed away in the warden’s car and are now on the lam and hiding out at Emmett’s house. All the plans the brothers have made are turned upside down by the side mission the two fugitives are determined to rope them into, and their theft of the car Emmett and Billy were going to use for their journey. The majority of the book follows this tangential story as the brothers try to track them down, retrieve their vehicle, and get back to their original plan.
There are a few things about this book that I thought worked spectacularly well. The first is the depiction of the characters. Each is so well developed, has such depth, and even those whose motives are or behaviour is suspect are given a fair shot at sharing their internal logic and motivations. This makes each character so lifelike that they could practically step off the page and appear, fully formed, in front of the reader. This also lends itself extraordinarily well to the moral and ethical dilemmas that are woven into the story in each character’s separate story, as well as how they overlap and combine. Though it’s one story and one set of events, each character is experiencing their own adventure and has their own motives and needs within it. It’s interesting to see how these individual perspectives work together or conflict as the story progresses, and how each character navigates the inevitable problems that arise from these conflicts.
I was completely drawn into this book and really loved the rich description and attention to detail. Some passages fairly came to life as I read, and even some of the side characters felt real. I can see why Towles has gotten so much praise for his writing, because he is definitely a skilled and inspiring storyteller. However. The book is not perfect. There were times where the side stories got a bit much to manage, and others where the story dragged and felt like it re-tread ground we’d already traveled over to a degree that was distracting. I think it could have benefited from a more liberal dose of editing, though the writing itself is excellent. This book was my number 4 pick for the quarterfinal round and number 6 for the semifinal round.
The bestselling author of A Gentleman in Moscow and Rules of Civility and master of absorbing, sophisticated fiction returns with a stylish and propulsive novel set in 1950s America
In June, 1954, eighteen-year-old Emmett Watson is driven home to Nebraska by the warden of the work farm where he has just served a year for involuntary manslaughter. His mother long gone, his father recently deceased, and the family farm foreclosed upon by the bank, Emmett’s intention is to pick up his eight-year-old brother and head west where they can start their lives anew. But when the warden drives away, Emmett discovers that two friends from the work farm have hidden themselves in the trunk of the warden’s car. Together, they have hatched an altogether different plan for Emmett’s future.
Spanning just ten days and told from multiple points of view, Towles’s third novel will satisfy fans of his multi-layered literary styling while providing them an array of new and richly imagined settings, characters, and themes. – Goodreads
Book Title: The Lincoln Highway
Author: Amor Towles
Series: No
Edition: Hardback/Audiobook
Published By: Viking
Released: October 5, 2021
Genre: Fiction, Literary, Historical, Adventure
Pages: 576
Date Read: April 13-20, 2022
Rating: 6/10
Average Goodreads Rating: 4.28/5 (124,743 ratings)