The Lincoln Highway - a book review

On my recent travels through Australia, from Melbourne, along the great Alpine Road, through Nowa Nowa, to Cooma, and back along more Alpine ways, along the Upper Murray River and resting at "The Hume Resort" I was accompanied by

Amor Towles “The Lincoln Highway”.

And yes, having a road book with you on a road trip was actually quite inspiring, so I thought. And 576 pages seemed a perfect length, not risking to run out of reading fuel.

One of my habits is to not read the summery on the cover, nor some other information about the story of the book, although, I picked it from the small flyer the iconic Melbourne Avenue Bookstore prints (!!) quarterly, but that summery did not give away nothing from the story.

And different it is! Let’s face it, two brothers ,19 and 8 years old, set out to travel the Lincoln Highway across the US after destiny threw them out of their nest, you expect that two brothers travel the Lincoln Highway across the US.  Both the title and the premise set up your expectations, but somehow the genius writer turns things upside down, and 180 degrees diametral.

Ever since stories were told the storyteller plays with the imagination of the reader/listener, we grew up with radio, TV, and the movie theatre, and of course now all the streaming services. My point is we are trained in story, any dramaturgy feels familiar, and we almost appreciate when this expectation is disrupted and when we are rattled up a bit by the unforeseen. Amor Towles is certainly a master in doing so.

Just coming over from “Cloud Cookoland” by Anthony Doerr I was already familiar with the practice of different perspectives in different centuries, similar irritating I found at the beginning that perspectives were changed drastically, all characters in the story were honoured with own chapters and their names as titles, but only one of them gets the task to tell the story in the first person, - his name is Duchesse - whilst all the other players are described from afar, from the he/she point of view.

The revelation why he is actually called Duchess is delivered very late in the story, the reader got so accustomed to the name that the final revelation reminded me of my curiosity at the very beginning when the name was introduced the first time. How quickly we get used to things we first questioned!

And is Duchesse even the main character? Aren’t they all leading roles, pushing the story forward?

I wrote my theses about the "Theatre of the Absurd", and ever since I admire a good story turn, which is almost to absurd to believe, and if you are like me and enjoy each chapter's pure cliff hanger with the suspension dialled up high and the astonishing awe big, then this is your book!

After all, one of the heroes always quotes hero’s stories, which guides us through the book as constant backdrop, the 8-year-old boy carries with him a huge volume of “Professor Abacus Abernathe’s Compendium of Heroes, Adventurers and other Intrepid Travellers", feeding great adventures and storytelling knowledge to the reader. The professor, certainly an alter ego for the author, includes in his compendium an empty chapter of blank pages for the reader to tell their own life’s adventure.

But where to start?

“Homer began his story in medias res, which means in the middle of the things. He began in the ninth year of the war with the hero, Achilles, nursing his anger in his tent, and ever since then, this is the way that many greatest adventurer stories have been told”.

Have you started your story yet?