Review: The Lincoln Highway: A Novel by Amor Towles

 Dear Lit Loves,

Greetings!  And well, thankfully I am returning to my book club meetings this week.  Interestingly, the last two book selections were just not my favorite genres.  Why do I read the books then?  I keep hoping that maybe the author or content of the book is going to surprise me and be better than I expected.  Thus far, all I can really say is:  ain't happenin' for me.  Perhaps I am becoming too picky in my literature choices or maybe I'm just old enough to know what I like to read and know when a book comes along that I would say to someone, "You should really read this."

So back to my book club selections.  And mind you, this is not a selection I made, but rather, a selection another individual in the book club has made that we have all agreed to read for a given month.  The latest book is The Lincoln Highway:  A Novel by Amor Towles.  Honestly, I had no familiarity with the author.  I know his previous books were bestsellers and that he attended Yale University and earned his Master's degree in Literature from Stanford.  The book itself is close to 600 pages which always makes me skeptical because when a book is written with this many pages, I generally read it and think, "If the author had cut 300 pages, he/she could have still achieved the same result."   

With The Lincoln Highway, you have a narrative that surrounds one teenager who gets sent to a work farm and he is returning home after his father dies leaving the family house and acreage to he and his younger brother.  The oldest brother, Emmett, decides that he and his brother Billy should sell the house and land and go forth to create a future for themselves.  Their mother abandoned the family years before and it's not really made clear why.  Emmett returns home to discover his brother Billy has located all these postcards that their mother sent them once she left the family.  Postcards depicting her travels along The Lincoln Highway on her way to California.  Postcards that their father kept from them.  Emmett eventually warms to Billy's travel suggestion and the reader thinks they will be off to California to locate their mom.  No.  While Emmett is closing on the sale of the homeplace and getting his car ready for the trip, two boys who served time on the juvenile work farm with him suddenly appear announcing they actually returned to Nebraska with Emmett by hiding in the trunk of the warden's vehicle.   The warden drove Emmett back home to Nebraska.   Suddenly readers discover these two boys had not finished serving their penance and have now left the work farm with the intention of never returning to it.  

Next, the oldest stowaway, Duchess, convinces Emmett to take he and his friend, Woolly, to New York so Woolly can visit his grandfather's home in the Adirondacks and claim his $150,000 heritage which they will all eventually split.  Alas, there really is no traveling extensively on the Lincoln Highway.  There is a road trip to New York which turns into a wild goose chase.  And I have to say, I have no idea why the author chose to take that turn of events with this book.  There are so many shenanigans, disruptions, side characters, unexpected turn of events, and a multitude of sadness that is portrayed as "funny" when it is anything but funny.   The reader does eventually learn why three of the four boys were sentenced to the work farm, but for only two of the four musketeers do we ever learn what fate awaits them.  Needless to say, there were a few too many storylines that just were never brought to fruition and I was left wondering what happened to multiple side characters.  There is also a lot of redundancy in the book particularly in terms of when the characters were speaking to one another.  

The most interesting part to me involved how in the world the author was going to end this grand escapade that I thought was going to center around The Lincoln Highway, but instead takes a seriously awkward turn toward the misadventures of four boys making their way to New York and what happens once they arrive.  After reading close to six hundred pages, I was ready for illustrations of lessons learned and some self-evident themes, but those were just not present in this book for me.  There were parts of the book that were so depressing I really did not wish to read further, but in order to write this review and discuss the book with members of my book club, I trudged on making myself continue to read the book when I just wanted to move on to my next book in the queue.  

Frankly, I just cannot write a winning review of The Lincoln Highway.  This is usually not the case for me even when I am reading a book completely outside of my favorite genres, but it is the unvarnished truth.  I refuse to write a winning review of a book that I honestly would not readily recommend to my own friends, acquaintances, or readers of this blog.  I would not recommend this book and I am curious as to why it was selected as a potential read in the book club I attend.  

Here's hoping my next book goes above and beyond my expectations.

Best,

Grace (Amy)