The Lincoln Highway
Amor Towles
★★★★★ 5/5
Fiction
Mr. Towles cements his must-read status
With A Gentleman in Moscow and The Rules of Civility, Amor Towles joined the club of writers whose new books I pick up regardless of reviews or subject matter. Ian McEwan, Kazuo Ishiguro, Ted Chiang, Andy Weir are some of the others whose works keep his books company on my shelf. With The Lincoln Highway, he has not just retained but cemented his club membership.
That Writing!
Amor Towles’ books have the kind of writing that makes one pause on pretty much every page, wanting to highlight or bookmark passages of elegantly expressed ideas—often simple, occasionally profound, sometimes simple aphorisms, but always full of grace and wisdom. It’s a trademark of his writing and sets him apart from any other contemporary fiction writers I am aware of—given my limited reading I know that isn’t saying much, but I think his writing style stands well out from the crowd. I now have several pages worth of quotes and passages saved from his books—words I occasionally go back to savor long after I’ve read the books. The Lincoln Highway is no exception to this. Here’s but one of many:
There’s a certain charm to a town like this. And there’s a certain kind of person who would rather live here than anywhere else—even in the 20th century. Like a person who wants to make some sense of the world. Living in the big city, rushing around amid all that hammering and clamoring, the events of life can begin to seem random. But in a town this size when a piano falls out of the window and lands on a fellow’s head, there’s a good chance you’ll know why he deserved it.
Wonderful Road Trip
Unlike his first two books, The Lincoln Highway’s protagonists don’t come from nobility or money. Rather, they are a band of boys, most of them teenagers, who’ve spent some time in juvenile incarceration for various reasons. The story is also unmistakably American
But as a civilized society, we ask that even those who have had an unintended hand in the misfortune of others pay some retribution.
The journey begins in rural Nebraska, where recently released Emmett and his eight year old brother Billy, decide to head westward on the Lincoln Highway to put their lives thus far behind them and make a fresh start, pursuing their own American Dream. Thanks to the shenanigans of a couple of Emmett’s friends from prison, they are forced Eastward to New York instead on an epic journey—a journey that is unmistakably American in ethos, even though the idea of an odyssey is universal.
The travels and travails of the four musketeers are told from various perspectives. While none of the youngsters are particularly well educated or well read, they all display maturity beyond their years: maturity likely forced on them by a harder life than the average teenager of today is likely to know. They also somehow seem to have a flair for powerful articulation — “as if they had all been to an Ivy League institution” as one Goodreads reviewer complains. But their verbal abilities aside, each of the characters brings a particular brand of wisdom and old world charm to the book—a hallmark of Mr. Towles’ characters.
Along the way, they get into plenty of trouble, much of it the making of Duchess, a character who sees morality in clear black or white, but whose own motivations and the circumstances leading to those, providing the reader with much to ponder. All of the many episodes present much entertainment and characteristic ‘life warmth’. As with his other books, the question the story poses without ever asking it is ‘How should one live life given the particular set of circumstances and constraints bestowed on them?’
How easily we forget — we in the business of storytelling — that life was the point all along.
The story never loses its sense of adventure or wonder and to its credit, feels much shorter than the 500+ pages that comprise this story that I was sad to finish reading, and not the least because of a dark turn of events at the end.
Overall: Don’t miss the ride
The Lincoln Highway is a road full of surprises, thoroughly enjoyable: full of twists and turns you don’t want to miss. A fine holiday read with an uplifting story at its core. I can’t wait for Mr. Towles’ next book.
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