'The Lincoln Highway' by Amor Towles

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 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.

MY THOUGHTS:

This is my first book finished this year. I wrapped it for myself and put it beneath the Christmas tree, having enjoyed A Gentleman in Moscow so much. At first I assumed Amor Towles was going to reverse his scope from close confinement in one building to an expansive road trip. The title turns out to be a smidgen misleading, since this is less of an actual travel tale and more about the snags and shenanigans which interrupt characters from potential road trips they intend to take. Lots of the action takes place in New York city.

It's about three 18-year-old men who became friends within a juvenile work farm where they were all serving time. Emmett Watson is on his way home to Nebraska. He'd been sentenced for unintentional man slaughter, and while there his father dies, leaving him the sole guardian of his 8-year-old brother, Billy. The bank has repossessed the family home, and the brothers now intend to start a new life west in California. However, it turns out Emmett's two mates, Duchess and Woolly, stowed away in the warden's car, and they intend to go east to New York. Although he sensibly plans to part from them ASAP, wily Duchess has his devious ways of making sure that doesn't happen.    

The characterisation is excellent. In contrast to Emmett's earnest, grounded determination to be a quiet, hardworking citizen for the sake of his little brother, his two friends are completely different personalities. Woolly is a gentle, lost soul who drifts through life at a slower pace than others, easily overwhelmed by life's details. Yet his observations sometimes plumb depths the multi-tasking masses overlook. And energetic, disarming Duchess is a street-smart, manipulative charmer with rigid notions about pay-backs and retribution. He's the sort of guy who desperately needs a true friend, yet hopelessly complicates the lives of whoever he grows close to. Distancing oneself from him always seems by far the wisest choice, yet he's so charismatic, that's far easier said than done. 

Shifting perspectives enable plenty of cliffhangers at the ends of chapters and sections. I read an interview with Amor Towles, who revealed his original intention to share all the scenes between Emmett and Duchess alone, yet several other voices insisted on having a say too. I'm glad of that, because without Woolly's thoughtful, eccentric observations, it would be a way less quirky book. And sure, the additions of voices such as Ulysses and Pastor John make the whole book more far-fetched and less credible as a whole, yet is that such a bad thing? They arguably make it more Dickensian and lyrical. It's the sort of book for suspending disbelief and going with the flow.  

I can't help wondering why Towles chose to use third person perspective for Emmett and first person for Duchess. Does he intend for readers to feel more closely connected to that impossibly presumptuous ratbag? I'm guessing many people do and it's easy to understand why. You'd have to be pretty hardhearted not to warm to him when you discover his backstory. I found myself liking Duchess more with each page I turned, even though his sheer cheek often astounded me. Yet young men with kind hearts and sound principles always appeal to me, for which reason Emmett never stopped being my favourite of the boys. 

He's not necessarily my favourite character altogether though. To me, the most awesome character is Sally, Emmett's next door neighbour. She's a strong-spirited young woman, firm in her conviction to use kindness and common sense as her compasses, no matter how crazy the world seems to grow. Her father calls her wilful, a nurser of furies, contrary and prone to speak her mind. He means all that as a pointed put-down but she takes it as a compliment. Sally's feisty presence lifts the quality of every scene she's in, and she's in far too few. My favourite chapter of the whole book is a personal reflection in which she defends her feminine household arts when she suspects the boys tend to blow them off. It's precisely because they're old-fashioned, time-consuming and unnecessary that she does them.  

The ending is abrupt and shocking. It winds up one part of the plot perfectly with some brutal poetic justice, yet I still can't help demanding, 'Is this really all we get?' Some seemingly important loose ends are left waving in the wind, including the strong purpose behind the Watson brothers' joint decision to choose California as their ultimate destination. Even more frustrating, a certain person gets to escape the 'unfinished business' that seemed to be pursuing him all through the story. I realise I'd been hanging out for that encounter, so it's the hardest rub which makes me long for a loophole. Must we accept that last page with absolute finality? If only there's a little room for ambiguity, I'll take it. 

Overall, I think the story is all about the complications of getting involved with other people's messes, inviting us to consider the extent to which the threads of different people's stories converge and blend into one. It's sprawling, ungainly, tangential and all over the place, but always strangely compelling. Laughter comes often, and I never even got started on the endearing, innocent genius of young Billy. I found it a perfect read for that lazy final week of the year beginning with Boxing Day, and would recommend it to anyone who's interested in reading it.

But although I can forgive the bizarrely far-fetched moments, I can't really forgive and forget the frustration of those loose ends! In fact I'd go so far as to say that Towles has let his readers down by letting these threads peter out, when he'd gained our interest so strongly and seemed to intimate they'd be main plot points. It's enough to remove a whole star from what might have been my final ranking. 

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