stephen_coulon 's review for:

The Lincoln Highway by Amor Towles

2.0

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It's an historical fiction that sees a pair of brothers take a cross country road trip in 1950s America in hopes of restarting their lives. Everything that elevated Towles’s last novel, A Gentleman in Moscow, is abandoned here as the author bafflingly adopts a completely new approach to narrative. For instance, Gentleman limits the setting to a single building which allows Towles to unfold layers of alluring detail, but this book widens to an unmanageable scale, half the USA, forcing the author to rush past any meaningful chances to exhibit his signature eye for exactitude. Likewise for characterization. Gentleman’s focus on only two main characters allows for verisimilar and touching development, whereas, this book’s cast of seven protagonists, alternating their narration, gives none of them a chance to grow beyond being mere plot and thematic devices. Finally, Towles’s notable sunny optimism is a bad fit for the stories he wants to tell here. The considerable criminal elements in this novel’s plot lines never convey any convincing spirit of danger or depravity when passed through Towles’s rosy Disneyfied narrative lens.