The Lincoln Highway
Ratings144
Average rating4.2
Set up as travel story with a trip to San Francisco but they never go west. Amor Towles is a master character builder and the real ‘journey' takes place within the characters. While, not as good as his others, I enjoyed the story.
I found the lack of punctuation distracting and the mythology overdown,
If you like your heroes white, male, and full of so-called Midwestern family values, you will probably appreciate The Lincoln Highway more than I did. Towles is a beautiful writer and he knows how to tell a ripping yarn. But his interesting, complex secondary characters deserve better; their primary function is to help our hero (and his little brother sidekick) learn valuable lessons, and to serve as counterpoints to his pure goodness. Don't even get me started on the “magical Negro,” the saintly hometown girl, and the prostitutes with hearts of gold.
The book takes place in 1954, and it feels like it was written then as well.
A genuinely really good road trip book that doesn't just feel like a retelling of On The Road
Adding this to my Favorite Books list. Incredible writing and imaginative structure and epic story construction. An absolute pleasure
Seemed fine - It had a lot of set up, but I didn't have enough time to finish it. I got about 3 hours in or so.
I don't say this often, but I wanted another 300 pages in this book.
I didn't read the book jacket, so I went on recommendation alone. It felt like it was going to be a book about two brothers in search of their mother. But, man, it wasn't about that at all. The four male protagonists intertwine their lives and in a short time, learn the power of friendship. And these were some flawed friendships, to be sure, but the way they navigated them, forgave one another, and how we saw beautiful moments in unlikeable situations, made me happy I hadn't known what to expect.
3.5 stars
Good characters, but not a lot of development. The only character we really got to know was Woolly and his story was predictable (if depressing).
After their father dies, two brothers set out on a journey across America to find their mother who walked out on their family 10 years prior. The elder brother, Emmett, spent some time in a juvenile prison so we are introduced to some of his dodgy acquaintances along the way. The book jumps between all these perspectives and eventually comes to a finish that left me a bit shook.
While the book was interesting to read I wouldn't say that I loved it, hence the 4 star rating!
I am an unashamed lover of genre literature and am wary of literary novels. Amor Towles is nothing short of perfection in crafted story telling. The narrative arc seems eternally stuck in this novel, but day after day stories happen, evolve, resolve, characters come and go. I loved it.
This book was almost as good as eating stuffed artichokes and fettuccine mio amore with four of your closest friends.
Really enjoyed reading this book, although it was a bit long. I was disappointed that the story never went anywhere and shocked/horrified by the callousness and actions of the main character (who is supposed to be likable) in the last chapter.
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.
This story was funny, and different, and interesting. So you might ask why I only gave it four stars instead of five. It was the ending. Yes. I enjoyed most of the book. The author make everything which seemed unrealistic, be something that could truly happen, except the ending. Glad I read it, but not sure I'd go out of my way to recommend.
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
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.
Emmett Watson is driven home by the warden of the juvenile detention facility from which Emmett was just released. His father has recently died, his mother is gone, and the family farm has been foreclosed upon. Emmett plans to take his brother, Billy, and start a new life in a city far away, but the sudden arrival of two friends from the facility, Duchess and Woolly, pull Emmett into another direction.
One of the memorable things about this novel is that every character, from young Billy to deeply flawed Duchess and, oddly, even the villains of the book like the wicked preacher, has something to offer the world and, more specifically, to the developing character of eighteen-year-old Emmett.
The truth of the novel is that each character is deeply flawed and, out of these flaws and the consequences of those flaws, each character becomes a better human being.
A wise book that I heartily recommend.
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.
I enjoyed A Gentleman in Moscow quite a bit and had high hopes for this new offering from Towles. He came through with a completely different yet utterly enjoyable story. I enjoyed the historical setting, the characters, and the plot. I highly recommend this book to lovers of historical or literary fiction.
Thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for the digital ARC of this book.