The Lincoln Highway

Book Reviews

Nov 10

The Lincoln Highway
By: Amor Towles

[Fulfilled ‘A book over 500 pages’ for Shelf Reflection’s 2023 Reading Challenge]

“‘Well that’s life in a nutshell, ain’t it. Lovin’ to go to one place and havin’ to go to another.’”

I really enjoyed Towles’ book, A Gentleman in Moscow. I didn’t like The Lincoln Highway as much. Still a good read, but what I liked about A Gentleman in Moscow was getting to know the primary character, his wit and charm and mischief and because The Lincoln Highway had a larger cast of characters, the whole vibe of the book was different.

It’s a different setting and a different flow.

I will say, I liked it better than what the cover made me think I would. The length of the book and the cover make it seem like a daunting and boring book. If I hadn’t already read one of his books I doubt I would have ended up reading it for those reasons.

But just like A Gentleman in Moscow, what seems like a book that will take forever to read, actually didn’t feel like it took me that long! The story engaged you well enough to keep the pages turning. So I was glad about that.

Probably the two biggest downsides for me was the character of Duchess (because he made me so mad) and the presented plot at the beginning that never really happened. You have these two boys who just lost their dad and they are about to cross the country via The Lincoln Highway to start a new life and supposedly find their mother who left them years ago. The Lincoln Highway because she had written them postcards sent from destinations along the route.

This is the adventure you think you’re going to read. And though this may be a spoiler, I feel like it’s an important one to point out to potential readers: That is not the adventure.

The adventure is three 18-year-old boys traveling 1500 miles (in the wrong direction) in 1950s America over the course of ten days. Instead of traveling West toward San Francisco, they end up heading east side-tracked in New York.

The book is the adventure before ‘the adventure.’ The end of the book is them finally setting out from Times Square toward the other coast.

To me, that was disappointing. I wanted to know what the deal was with their mom and how they were going to find her and what their lives were going to look like. Maybe at each stop of the postcard they would learn something new about their mom or themselves. Instead, it was a reading of constantly diverted plans due to Duchess screwing things up. Whether in books or movies I always have a hard time with the screw-up friend. I’m sure there’s an Enneagram observation to be made about me, but that’s where I’m at with Duchess.

Another thing that influenced the way I read the book was that I kept forgetting that Emmett, Woolly, and Duchess were just teenagers. The story begins with Emmett returning home after finishing his sentence at the juvenile detention center in Salina, KS. Woolly and Duchess had stowed away in the warden’s car and ‘escaped’ undetected. I kept thinking they were adults coming from prison.

The things that happen hit different depending on if they were teenagers or adults. Sometimes I was annoyed or thought they were stupid or questioned their choices, etc, but I had to keep reminding myself that they’re just teenagers so their frontal lobe is not fully developed and that’s really how they would probably act.

I’m not sure if there was anything that could have been written differently to have kept me on the right wavelength; it might have just been an issue with my brain. But I wish I could have visualized them better so I was processing the events in the right light.

Characters

The book is told from multiple POVs. Sally and Duchess in first person, the others in an extended third person narrative that retains a distinct character voice and way of speaking. I don’t have issue with the first person choice, but I wish it would have been used for Emmett’s character. He seemed so central to the story but so distant to the reader. He’s the honorable one you want to root for, but you don’t feel connected to him like the other characters.

Emmett was portrayed as the ‘hero’ type of character who made the right choices and held everything together. Who always knew what to do. He is also now the caretaker of his 8-year-old brother and has a plan for their future.

Billy says of himself that he is the Xenos figure— meaning ‘friend’— who, in stories, is there at just the right time to help. He is that throughout the book. All the characters have a connection to Billy and his book, a trust that puts Billy in some precarious situations but necessary to move the story in the right direction. He’s the character of innocence, who sees the best in people. He’s also the ‘know-it-all’ who likes to do things ‘by the book.’

Duchess. “Fast-talking, liberty-taking, plan-upending paradox known as Duchess.” He is “full of energy and enthusiasm and good intentions. But sometimes his energy and enthusiasm get in the way of his good intentions, and when that happens the consequences often fall on someone else.”

And so Duchess is the ‘selfish’ friend that you know has loyalty to the hero, but makes choices for his own benefit and asks forgiveness later. He’s a semi-antagonist. And it drove me nuts. Because we find out more about his background and what led to him being in Salina in the first place and it begs for compassion and grace for his behavior and choices.

But at the same time, he really made some bad choices that could have hurt Emmett and Billy more than they actually did. I don’t like giving a pass to that like- ‘Oh, well… his dad… so how else is he supposed to act?’ No. He can be a decent person and think about the consequences of his actions!

And I went back and forth about it. Again, my compassion landed more during the times where my brain was fully aware of his young age. He’s the guy you wonder how many second-chances you are expected to give.

Woolly is Duchess’s sidekick. Comes from money. In fact, his trust money is the reason he and Duchess left Salina in the first place- to head to the family cabin in the Adirondacks and get it. If you’ve read Rules of Civility (I haven’t), Woolly is related to the Wallace Wolcott in that story.

Woolly is the gentle-spirited, somewhat slow-minded friend who takes pleasure in the simple things. I was a bit confused by his intellect. I couldn’t tell if there was a slowness there or not because someimtes he seemed simple and other times he was making astute observations or using big vocabulary. I do like the writing voice Towles chose for him and that he had his own way of saying things. He was a likable character.

Sally kinda pushes herself into the story, refusing to be left behind to ‘duty’ and ‘service.’ She plays the traditional 50’s woman of the home type of character who spends her days doing laundry and making preserves.

“Time is that which God uses to separate the idle from the industrious… for what is kindness but the performance of an act that is both beneficial to another and unrequired?”

Always with something to do, she identifies with the Martha of the biblical Mary/Martha story in which she feels her service and kindness goes unnoticed and unappreciated. She desires a home of her own and some autonomy in her life.

I suppose another character of the book was Billy’s “compendium” of adventures he carried around with him. The stories of Ulysses, Achilles, Daniel Boone, Monte Cristo, etc. Stories of heroes, adventurers, and travelers. This is the heart of The Lincoln Highway.

To travel, to adventure, to write your story. To discover.

And that’s what we get with Towles’ book. We see them each on their own adventure. They’re in an in-between stage of life. They’re adventuring to find a new home.

Towles’ said the original title of the book was ‘Unfinished Business.’ As you read, you’ll know why. Starting fresh and trying to find a place to land often requires taking care of unfinished business. Tying those loose ends so that you can move on. One character in particular had more of those than the others.

Unique Formatting

Towles did something different with the dialogue in this book. Instead of using quotation marks like normal, he differentiated dialogue by using a dash (—) only. It took some getting used to and wasn’t as distracting or confusing as I thought it would be. Though, I’m not sure if it really accomplished what the author wanted by formatting it that way.

Another unique aspect of the book was that the chapters (or parts) counted down instead of up. The first section is titled ‘10’ and the last was ‘1.’

In an interview, the author stated that “it seemed to me that the reader deserved to have the same experience while reading the book that I had while writing it: of knowing that the story was not open-ended, but ticking down day by day to its inescapable conclusion.”

I like the idea. Although, in some sense the conclusion is open-ended because the book ends with a beginning— a new start on The Lincoln Highway— and we don’t get to know how it ends.

Randos

There were several mentions of Seward, Nebraska and their huge Fourth of July celebration. My sister lives there and I can confirm that even today The Fourth is a big deal! Seward’s population is around 7600, but their Independence Day festivities often garner an attendance of 40,000.

Someday I’ll read a book where a pastor is portrayed as a good person. It was not this day. Pastor John is a train vagabond with ill intent towards Billy and Emmett but with delusions that it’s ‘God’s Will’ that he do the things. Really the theological messages in this book are a bit lacking. Ulysses offers his own theological advice to Billy by saying:

“The Good Lord does not call you to your feet with hymns… He calls you to your feet by making you feel alone and forgotten. For only when you have seen that you are truly forsaken will you embrace the fact that what happens next rests in your hands, and your hands alone.”

We like this message because we like to know that we are in control of our own destiny.

I think it’s interesting to read the verbiage ‘forsaken.’ Because where do you read that in the Bible? Jesus says ‘Why have you forsaken me?’ as he is being crucified. But Christ’s death was the act that tore the veil forever removing that separation between man and God.

Deuteronomy 31:8 (which is repeated in Hebrews 13:5) literally says that God will never leave you nor forsake you.

The idea that God would make us feel alone and forgotten and that what happens is only in our own hands is biblically absurd and not a great way to live life. Just throwing this out there in case anyone was on the verge of labeling Ulysses’ words as profound. Yes, Billy was correct to kick the guy, but that doesn’t mean God wasn’t there or working in that situation. Just saying.

I like the tidbits of history that Towles dutifully puts into his books. In this one he mentioned the Civil Defense Test in New York (practicing for bomb drops) and how deserted Times Square was during those times. I found a video of it HERE.

If you’re curious about The Lincoln Highway. Check out this PAGE. and the map below.

Recommendation

I would say if you liked A Gentleman in Moscow, it doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll LOVE this one, but I think there’s a pretty good chance you won’t hate it.

It’s deceptively long and reads quicker than you’d think.

If you like historical fiction and traveling adventures and 1950s New York, I think this would be a great read for you!

Amor Towles is a great storyteller and great at picking specific settings to put them in.

[Content Advisory: a handful of swear words; one scene at a ‘circus’ that is actually some sort of strip club, but it’s mostly implied and vaguely discussed]

You can order a copy of this book using my affiliate link below.