The Lincoln Highway by Amor Towles | Book Review

hi guys olive here here today to review the lincoln highway by amortols this book was published in 2021 by viking which is owned by penguin random house the hardcover of this book comes in at 592 pages however i read an advanced copy of this book that i received for free for reviewing purposes through open letters review the online literary journal where i am an editor this is the third novel from amor tolls and his two previous books were wildly successful to say the least rules of civility came out in 2011 a gentleman in moscow was released in 2016. it actually seems like he's in a pretty good rhythm of releasing a new book every five years if he continues down that path i'm assuming we'll see his next one around 2026. when he released a gentleman in moscow in 2016 i think it was a little bit surprising to readers of his first novel like myself to see that he was setting a book in russia of all places when his first book was positively dripping with new york city and although new york city does have its place in this new novel i think it might similarly prove to be a surprise because it starts in america's heartland the book opens in 1954 when 18 year old emmett watson is returning home to nebraska from kansas where he has been serving time on a prison farm a reformatory farm school for troubled youths a little bit of time was shaved off of his sentence because of the death of his father so emmett needs to return home not just to get all the affairs in order but also because he has an eight-year-old brother and their mother left them a very long time ago so he's returning home to basically become the man of the family to become the father to his brother it wouldn't be a very good idea for eminent billy to stay in their hometown in nebraska first of all because emmett doesn't have a good reputation around town anymore because of this crime that he committed that got him sent to the work farm you find out what that is basically immediately there's no secrecy surrounding that but i will leave that to you to find out if you decide to read this book but also they don't want to stay because the farm that they were living on as a family isn't in a very good financial position their father had made a lot of bad choices as a farmer he was not a good farmer he could never get the hang of it and so the farm is not in good shape so billy has this idea that he and emmett should head out west to california to try to find their long-lost mother billy has a reason to believe that she might be living in california that's why he wants to go out there and to emmett that's as good of a place as any to set down roots and start over again even if he doesn't fully believe that they'll find their mother out there but he wants to let his brother continue to dream so he doesn't tell him that but before emmett and billy can hit the road and make their way out to california two young men who emmett served time with on that prison youth farm whatever you want to call it they show up at his door duchess and wooly are their names those are nicknames you find out their real names later on but unlike emmett they weren't released early they've actually escaped and they want emmett to take them using his car to new york so that woolly can find and claim this inheritance that he's entitled to and in exchange for getting him to new york he's going to split that money with duchess and emmett's emmett doesn't have any interest in helping them out with this plan especially because he just was released from prison he doesn't want any more trouble he just wants to take care of his brother and get out to california but as you find out he ends up not having much of a choice in the matter and so the three young men and the young boy head out they're all headed in the same direction but they're all on their own different journeys you could say at this point in the book we have a pretty good idea of what billy and emmett are after we know what their ultimate goal is but we're still trying to figure out what duchess and wooly are all about duchess is this larger than life character he's very theatrical he's charming but he's also very sly he's the son of a horrifically selfish actor father who put him in so many bad situations as he was growing up and so duchess is also very much looking out for number one but you get the sense it's because he kind of had to because he never had anyone looking out for him and that character of duchess is contrasted against emmett who is very much the good honest midwestern boy that's not to say the duchess doesn't have a moral compass it's just that his morality is a twisted self-centered kind of morality his self-serving nature is even betrayed by the fact that the sections of the book told from his perspective are the only ones told in the first person and so you get to hear in duchess's own words and you can also read between the lines that part of his personal journey part of his ultimate goal is to settle some scores and woolly he is a different one let's just say that it's clear that he's not mentally mature for his years he's very childlike he's gotten himself into a lot of trouble and continues to get himself into a lot of trouble because he's distractible he lacks impulse control he seems to be in a state of arrested development but even though that is frustrating for the people around him it also makes him a very lovable character because he's retained that little boy sense of wonder about the world it's one of several reasons why he gets along so famously with emmett's eight-year-old brother billy the four main characters of this book are paired off so on one hand there's duchess and wooly on the other there's emmett and billy and this is another really interesting way that duchess and emmett are mirror images of one another throughout this book because in their respective pairings they're the ones who need to take the lead and take care of their other half if you will duchess has to take care of woolly because he is so mentally immature even though they're supposedly around the same age and then of course emma has to take care of the eight-year-old billy because that's his little brother they don't have parents around to help them out and billy is also a young child who trusts everyone so emmett has to keep him out of trouble but it's really funny throughout this book because the two characters that are supposedly in need of care woolly and billy they're actually running the show a whole lot more than their counterparts think i think it's really interesting to note that all four of those main characters the two pairs of characters lost their mothers in one way or another and then the lead two characters duchess and emmett they also had or have very complex relationships with their fathers those two resent their fathers for the decisions that their fathers made but like so many of us do they end up like their parents anyway one of the two of them realizes this and makes adjustments accordingly the other one doesn't to his detriment as you can probably gather given how much i've spoken about the characters just so far in this review this is a very character-driven novel and to address what some of you might be wondering as you're considering whether or not you want to read this book and by that i mean how it compares to his two previous books i would say this book is somewhere in between rules of civility and a gentleman in moscow but i actually think this book will appeal a lot more to lovers of a gentleman in moscow rather than fans of rules of civility like myself because of the focus on characters over plot like a gentleman in moscow reading the lincoln highway is much more about enjoying the beautiful writing and falling in love with these characters it's about the experience of reading it rather than consuming a very well thought through story however i don't think the lincoln highway is quite the comfort read that a gentleman in moscow was for a lot of people this one is actually a lot darker there's a lot of death in here in places you might not even expect it so i don't think it's quite as relaxing as a lot of people found a gentleman in moscow to be and it is a little bit more focused on plot than that book but it's also not the extremely well thought through story that rules of civility was so like i said i do think it's somewhere in between the two but edging toward the gentleman in moscow side but something this book does have in common with both of his previous books is the amounts of philosophizing and wisdom sharing that he does within this book as well as the weaving together of multiple themes i think that's one of his real strengths as an author beyond just how beautiful his writing is i think there's so much going on within his books at any one time and i think there's so much to learn from his books i would say that the major theme within this book is the idea of a journey beginning with a sense of liberation i think that's a big reason why abraham lincoln is such an important figure throughout this book the highway named in his honor is this book's title after all but even though a lot of the focus of this book is on the inspiration for taking a long journey that spark or whatever it is that makes a person want to break free and seek out whatever is calling to them there's also a lot of talk in here about the dangers and the lessons that the road or really the world has in store for anyone who decides to leave the comfort and safety of home but then there's also another character introduced later on who very much represents the promise of the end of a long journey and since this is an amortols book there are plenty of literary references nestled throughout the book to support his major themes i mean literature just plays such a huge part in amortols's novels if you've read his previous two then you will absolutely know what i'm talking about there always seemed to be a small handful of books that really have an influence on his new novel and in this book i would say the three major influences are the three musketeers the count of monte cristo and the odyssey so if you're looking to get the absolute maximum out of this book as you can you don't have to do this but i will certainly let you know in case you want to i would highly recommend that you read those classics preferably before going into this book maybe even at the same time but if you're only going to pick one of them you definitely need to have read the odyssey i do feel like this author's main strengths are on display within this new novel i mean the writing is impeccable as always i think he excels at developing believable characters who are very easy to become invested in i think his books are deep and layered and i also think he really understands timing he knows how to slowly roll out information in a way that really keeps your interest as a reader like he doesn't tell you right away how three of the main characters ended up on this prison farm he staggers those reveals and he tells you that information at just the right moments but this is an uneven book i thought the first third of it was fantastic i was really invested but then the rest of it and this is a long book please keep in mind it's almost 600 pages so the rest of it could be a slog i didn't think it was very well plotted and it frequently meanders and even though this book is so long things weren't very settled by the end of it and not even in a good way not in an open-ended oh that's kind of fun to think about kind of way much more like there were too many threads and too many of them were left dangling by the end of it and i think that was very much a symptom of the fact that he tried to include too many character perspectives he was trying to do too much earlier on in the book and so there wasn't really a good way to bring everything together in a cohesive way at the end so he didn't do himself any favors by including so much in this book but if you're looking for a more character-driven novel to just kind of settle in with in the same way as a gentleman in moscow i think you might end up being a lot more satisfied by this book than i ended up being like i said i do think this new book is less likely to appeal to big fans of his first book rules of civility because of this new book's focus on the characters i am one of the fans of his first book rules is actually my favorite book of all time i have read it seven times as of the time i'm filming this i say that because i reread this book every single june so in the future i will have read it more than seven times but something that i did really like about this new book is the fact that just like in a gentleman in moscow there's a character from rules of civility in this book he didn't have a big part to play in rules but if you're well versed with that novel like i am then you are very likely to know who it is and that definitely brought a smile to my face so i ended up having mixed feelings about this book but i can definitely see it appealing to other readers out there especially the legion of fans of his last book so those were my thoughts on the lincoln highway by amor tolls if you have any comments or questions about this book this video or about anything in general please feel free to leave those in the comment section below but if you would like to keep up with what i'm reading and writing about right now you can find me across social media using the links at the bottom of the description box below thank you so much for watching i hope you're having a wonderful day i will see you in the next video bye [Music]

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Keywords: books, booktube, adult booktubers, book review, new books, new books october 2021, amor towles, amor towles new book, the lincoln highway, the lincoln highway book, the lincoln highway review, the lincoln highway book review, the lincoln highway amor towles, the lincoln highway amor towles review, rules of civility, a gentleman in moscow

Id: j3pb8JrsRQg

Length: 14min 14sec (854 seconds)

Published: Fri Oct 15 2021