Amor Towles – The Lincoln Highway – Review

After reading A Gentleman in Moscow earlier this year, my first thought was Amor Towles had reached his peak as an intriguing and competent novelist. The uniqueness and depth of Gentleman, to my mind, couldn't be surpassed. Well, fortunately for his readers, I could not have been more wrong. The Lincoln Highway is an example and triumph of excellent 21st-century storytelling.

Generally, this is an American Road tale. However, it's really an "almost" road story because the characters never really hit the Lincoln Highway but are obstructed from doing so, even traveling in reverse to New York rather than their intended destination of California.

It is Midwest 1954. Emmett, our 18-year-old protagonist, has just been released from a delinquent detention facility. However, he is dropped off at his farm to find it has been foreclosed by the bank. In addition, Emmett's father has died, leaving him with his younger brother, Billy. This child is undoubtedly precocious, only 8 years of age, with a razor-sharp mind of a 30-year-old genius.

We meet the other two main characters who decide to escape the reformatory by hiding in the trunk of the warden's car. While Emmett is looking over his late 40's Studebaker, Duchess and Woolly suddenly appear, standing in front of his garage.

The book is written from the particular perspectives of the characters. All characters are written in the third person, while Duchess and Sally are written in the first. This is an exciting storytelling tool, giving their respective feelings and thoughts about the same circumstances. The Lincoln Highway is at once a character-driven story and an adventure/thriller at the same time.

Mirroring the actual trials of these characters is a book that little Billy reads daily: Professor Abacus Abernathe's Compendium of Heroes, Adventurers, and Other Intrepid Travelers. The heroes and travelers range from fictional to actual men. The hero often referred to is Ulysses from Homer's The Odyssey. Emmett and Billy's adventures on a freight train to New York meet a WWII vet of the same name, whose circumstances are similar to the Greek legend. This character has an astounding tale of survival of his own that is nothing less than astonishing. The huge black WWII Vet, Ulysses, is a beautiful character.

The most colorful and tragic character has to be Duchess. The son of an ambulant Shakespearean actor, the boy, learns the ways of the entertainer, a Carnival lifestyle using the tricks of the trade to merely survive. The young man is flamboyant, charming, and a natural con. We discover that Duchess's backstory is tragic and quite sad. We come to understand his criminal-est ways, his flair for the dramatic, and the well-guarded facade he shows the world.

This is a beautiful novel and one that should be read again and again.