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‘The Lincoln Highway’ by Amor Towles

From the writer of ‘A Gentleman in Moscow’

Probably because he confined Count Rostov to the Metropol Hotel in his previous novel — the brilliantly crafted A Gentleman in Moscow — this time around Amor Towles decided to allow his protagonists to play outside to their heart’s content. The Lincoln Highway is an adventure of four boys headed in one direction but also in the other. 

You’d think the story was about Emmett Watson, an 18-year-old orphan who must take his eight-year-old brother to California for a fresh start. Then you’ll think it’s about his brother Billy, the sweetest and brightest child who lights up every page he appears in. But when you meet the larger-than-life Duchess and the solid and other-worldly Woolly — Emmett’s friends who run away from a correctional facility in the boot of the car that brings Emmett home —  you might be forgiven for thinking that this book is actually their adventure and Emmett and Billy are just the facilitators. 

But then the story begins to be told from many more perspectives — a crooked preacher, a heartbroken wanderer, a girl fed up with chores, and a writer longing for his next muse, and suddenly it’s many stories in one, and the same story told again and again. 

An allegorical novel in many ways, The Lincoln Highway is an expansive and beautiful piece of literature. It leaves the heart full, if slightly heavy. 

The only thing missing? Count Rostov. But then, they don’t make men like him anymore. Not even in fiction.