Book Review: "The Lincoln Highway" by Amor Towles

Subplots are generally a difficult thing to get right. If any of you have read Shakespeare's Twelfth Night then you will know what 'getting it right' looks like. The interweaving of plot to subplot requires you to work with the same, or a familiar, character set. Then it requires some sort of connection to the main plot in which all the characters are somewhat or, indirectly, involved. Finally, we should have some sort of resolution to the subplot which comes in tandem with the main plot.

Taking the Shakespeare play as the example, we have a subplot in which Malvolio is professing his love for Olivia and is made to look like a fool (which is why he is technically the 'fool' character of the play). The subplot is resolved just as the revealing of true identity is done by the various other characters: Sebastian and Viola. This is how a subplot works well. Unfortunately, in Amor Towles' The Lincoln Highway - it does not work well at all. Instead, it proves to be a distraction from the story in which characters of little requirement show up at 'if' and 'when' points.

This is a story of a man who has just been released from jail after serving time for committing involuntary manslaughter. He gets into a fight with someone and that person accidentally hits their head and dies. When our protagonist, Emmett, gets out of prison, he realises his mother is gone, his father is gone and all he has left is his younger brother, Billy. He picks Billy up and they start towards California. They encounter a problem with some escapees hiding in the warden's car trunk who have very 'different' plans for Emmett and Billy.

This alone is a great story. I have read two other novels by Amor Towles and have, at most, enjoyed them. A Gentleman in Moscow was an amazing novel and Rules of Civility is something I would place in a close second. Unfortunately, it is The Lincoln Highway which would come third. Let us have a look at the various issues I had with this novel then:

1) The Subplot Situation

There were far too many and most of them were done awfully. Subplots on road trips are amazing to try out - but don't have them there looking foolish and using them as clownery. It's all well and good for a Shakespeare play, but just take a look at the social commentary subplots of roadtrip books such as Jack Kerouac's On the Road or John Steinbeck's Grapes of Wrath. Those subplots don't invite criticism of the characters looking silly, instead they provoke thought in the mind of the protagonist who is making their way along their journey.

2) The Writing Style

I have have never really found Amor Towles' other books to be overpacked with words until reading this one. This book is far too packed with words and after reading a few pages, the one thing you think about is why is it so wordy. What is the requirement for all of these words? It makes the novel seem more artificial than an authentic piece of prose. I've been forever against cramming words into sentences when less words does just as good a job. Especially with the topic that he chose to go for where a man is freed from prison. You would think that flowery language with tons of meaningless words does not suit the situation.

3) The Ending

Making an ending symbolic is one thing, but this was rather uneventful. I'm not going to say exactly what happened though, it was predicted from a very key moment about two thirds of the way through the book.

Conclusion

To conclude, I'm not sure this book worked as well as his others and I hope that with his next book, he decides differently upon undertaking a novel with so many side stories that are more or less irrelevent to the main story.