The Lincoln Highway

 

The Lincoln Highway by Amor Towles

Fiction

2021 Viking

Finished on March 5, 2023

Rating: 3.5/5 (Good)

Publisher's Blurb:

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.

Unlike some lengthy books, I did want this one to end. The Lincoln Highway isn't a boring novel, but the slow pace and the retelling of events from multiple perspectives had me calculating how many of the 576 pages remained as I read. Towles's digressions (from the recounting of Shakespeare plays, mythological adventures, and Homeric epics to philosophical paradoxes, vaudeville acts and magic tricks) are initially inventive, but as the story progresses, I grew weary of those asides, eager to return to the adventure at hand. The tension in the final pages had me wavering when it came time to rate the novel, but in all honesty, I didn't love it. It's a good (albeit melodramatic) tale, but it's not the outstanding read, like A Gentleman in Moscow. Having said that, Towles is a wordsmith, and I especially enjoyed the imagery in this passage:

In the months of summer, there were nights marked by the roll of thunder or the whistle of an arid wind on which Emmett could hear his father stirring in the next room, unable to sleep--and not without reason. Because a farmer with a mortgage was like a man walking on the railing of a bridge with his arms outstretched and his eyes closed. It was a way of life in which the difference between abundance and ruin could be measured by a few inches of rain or a few nights of frost. [Emphasis is mine]

The Lincoln Highway is peopled with memorable characters (the wise-beyond-his-years Billy, and the childlike Woolly, both of whom stole my heart), but this folksy tale is my least favorite of Towles's novels. I understand he's working on his fourth, which I look forward to, as I remain a fan in spite of this mildly disappointing read.

Photo Credit: Author's Website