Last month I read and reviewed Lauren Groff’s new book…the one by the author everyone RAVED about last year? The one so many people are raving about THIS year? And, admittedly, I felt like a loner because I JUST. DID. NOT. CARE. (That’s a feeling I don’t have that often, and when I do it is mostly about books.) Here’s another one: Amor Towles’s revered novel A Gentleman in Moscow. I tried. Over and over. Print and audio. Finally I admitted it just wasn’t for me, and gave up. Now, I have a copy of Mr. Towles’s new book, The Lincoln Highway (thanks to Penguin Group Viking and NetGalley) in exchange for my honest review. And while I don’t have the same loner feeling, I am definitely not among the many proclaiming this the best novel of 2021.
Unlike Gentleman In Moscow, with a single location throughout, The Linclon Highway is basically a quest tale combined with being a road trip story, a bildungsromane or coming-of-age story, and a social commentary about the U.S. The story revolves around four main characters: Primary is Emmitt Watson, who has just turned eighteen, along with his 8-year old brother Billy. Their father has recently died and, with their mother having left them when Billy was a baby, they are at a crossroads — literally. Emmett spent time in a juvenile work farm after the accidental death of another 17-year old who picked a fight with Emmett. The family farm has just gone into foreclosure, they have no money, all they have is Emmitt’s car, which he plans to drive to San Francisco so they can find their mother (ignoring the fact that although she sent nine postcards addressed to her sons as she traveled to California from Nebraska, they haven’t heard from her since. They need to find a place to go.
Emmitt is surprised to find that two men escaped from the work farm and stowed away in the trunk of the car in which the warden drove Emmitt home. Named Duchess and Woolly, they want Emmitt to head East rather than West, where they believe there is $150,000 in a trust fund for Woolly, who doesn’t feel like he fits anywhere and thinks it would “…have been wonderful…if everybody’s life was like a piece of a jigsaw puzzle. Then no one person’s life would ever be an inconvenience to anyone else’s.”
The story is told from multiple points of view, with Emmitt clearly just wanting to do the right thing and take care of his little brother, Duchess generally causing trouble everywhere he goes, Woolly good-naturedly touring as they go and eager to return to his childhood home, and young Billy, a precocious, optimistic, and likable kid who is full of surprises. In addition to these four, there is Sally, who lived on the farm next door to the Watsons and keeps showing up, winning my heart when she told Emmitt she was sick and tired of cooking, cleaning, and taking care of others — it was time to take care of herself! There are also some unique minor characters met along the way (to New York, it turns out). One standout is Townhouse, who tells his former bunkmate Emmitt, “As a black man, whether you end up carrying a mailbag, operating an elevator, pumping gas, or doing time, you’re going to be wearing a uniform. So you might as well choose the one that suits you.”
Each of the major characters is on their own quest, and they interact along the way. The road trip takes place over ten days, with a few adventures along the way requiring a bit of willing suspension of disbelief, but the storytelling is great, and the characters are memorable. I’m giving it four stars because it seems I am in the very tiny minority of people who aren’t raving about this book (for me, it was three stars, but I’m throwing in an extra one because although I didn’t love the experience of reading it, I do keep thinking about it, so clearly it was more significant than it felt at the time I was reading.