The Lincoln Highway
2021 • 593 pages
Ratings38
Average rating4.2
15
Ratings38
Average rating4.2
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER More than ONE MILLION copies sold A TODAY Show Read with Jenna Book Club Pick A New York Times Notable Book, and Chosen by Oprah Daily, Time, NPR, The Washington Post and Barack Obama as a Best Book of the Year “Wise and wildly entertaining . . . permeated with light, wit, youth.” —The New York Times Book Review “A classic that we will read for years to come.” —Jenna Bush Hager, Read with Jenna book club “A real joyride . . . elegantly constructed and compulsively readable.” – NPR 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 juvenile work farm where he has just served fifteen months 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, Billy, and head to California 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, one that will take them all on a fateful journey in the opposite direction—to the City of New York. 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.
Reviews with the most likes.
One sentence synopsis... Recently ‘released' from a juvenile reformatory, a group of boys embark on a road trip across American in 1954 - they don't make it far before a series of detours throw their plans into disarray.
Read it if you like... Americana, Huck Finn style stories. It was way too sentimental for me. There was never a doubt the young hero and his precocious little brother would have everything work out for them in the end. Towles' last two books led me to have higher expectations and this third novel was a big let down.
Dream casting... Charlie Plummer and Jacob Tremblay as brothers Emmett and Billy Watson.
Oh yeah this is like a 4.25-4.5 because some subplots were unnecessary and didn't add much in terms of character development and the middle dragged in places but some bits were easily in the 5.0 category.
Oh and with that my Goodreads yearly reading goal thing is done! Glad it ended with this, twas quite the novel (I'm not as sad anymore might cry myself to sleep but idk)
Great book, you don't get a new Amor Towles novel every day (year. many years actually) so yeah maybe I should have savoured it a bit more but I can re-read Rules and Moscow
I really like the way Towles writes. He's able to introduce a new character and within a page he or she is already fully formed in my mind. He does some neat tricks in this book to properly place you in time while constantly shifting character perspectives by having slight overlap in described events from one person to another.
I think I prefer the last book of his that I read, A Gentleman in Moscow, but this one is great as well. It meanders a bit here and there, and is perhaps a bit overlong, but that also just adds to the Odysseyian wandering feel of the whole thing and takes the story in places I did not expect.
I just don't know with this book. Ultimately it was well written and I wanted to know what all was going to happen, and so it gets four stars because of that. But it just wasn't what I expected, and maybe that's on me. I didn't mind the changing perspectives, some of the characters were great!, but others were random and I didn't get the point. I don't think I got the point in general though - it was a road-trip, but not; the characters don't really grow... I don't know. Four stars because I am glad I read it, it just fell a bit flat for me, especially after Towles other two books.
