A Book a Day: Amor Towles: The Lincoln Highway

Original language: English
Original title: The Lincoln Highway
Translation: Gemma Rovira Ortega for Salamandra
Year of publication: 2021
Valuation: recommendable

There are authors who, due to their limited literary proliferation, are quite unknown to a large part of the public. This would be the case of Amor Towles who, despite this and with only a few books published, each book he publishes is an event. So, succumbing to the charms of “Rules of Courtesy” and “A Gentleman in Moscow”, he had to launch me into his third and last book published to date.

The story begins on June 12, 1954 with the arrival of a young Emmet to his home in Nebraska (where his brother Billy is waiting for him) after spending a few months in the Salina correctional facility for having been the accidental cause of the death of another boy. . Emmet, a boy with great maturity, who regrets what happened and who knows that, despite having served his sentence, “when you have put an end with your own hands to the time that another man had allotted on this earth, demonstrate to the Almighty that you deserve His mercy should not take you a single day less than the rest of your life,” he sees upon his return from the correctional facility how a banker informs him that, due to the debts incurred by his recently deceased father, he and his brother will have to leave the house because it will become the property of the bank. So, due to the problems they could have living in the city where the boy’s death occurred and without having a place to live, they decide to go to California where their mother supposedly lives, who abandoned them eight years ago and who upon her departure sent them a postcard every day for the first nine days from each of the cities he passed through traveling the Lincoln Highway to Sant Francisco. But, just when they are planning the trip and are ready to leave, Duchess and Woolly appear by surprise, two runaway boys from Salina and friends of Emmett who have very different intentions.

Just forty pages are enough to make sure of Towles’ talent. The familiarity and success in the portrayal of the characters is magnificent and in reading one finds oneself between barns and agricultural areas, between the camaraderie between friends and the fraternity between brothers. Towles knows how to make you love the characters he masterfully portrays and profiles like few others. In this way, in a story that as we progress becomes more choral, the author gives voice to the four boys who, interspersed, star in the story and tell us the story from their point of view with a narration in first person that is very personal and that greatly facilitates the reader’s empathy towards each of them. Thus, one forms a clear opinion of his thoughts and his different characters because Towles knows how to handle with great skill the narrative rhythm and the distribution of the leading role, thus perfectly portraying the personalities of the four protagonists: Billy, the youngest, but in turn more educated and rational, Emmett, with his ideals and values ​​and a firm and constant purpose, Duchess, a fearless and reckless adventurer and Woolly perhaps the worst portrayed, always in Duchess’ wake.

In this road movie literary (I don’t like the term travel literature because it can lead to misunderstandings), the author describes the daily life of the four characters for ten days in a short period of time that in the eyes of the reader and the protagonists seems like a long time. further; The misfortunes and adversities they go through, the changes in plans and intentions, the dangers they face and the situations they live in make them suddenly mature and realize that the world is hostile and that it is not advisable to trust anyone because it is well known. that “goodness begins where necessity ends.” Thus, the different needs and intentions of the characters lead them to discover who they are and what their relationships are like while we discover their past. For this reason, what at first seems like a book with overtones of post-adolescent adventures becomes reflective and profound, since Towles has written a story in which maturity hits suddenly and bursts into the personality of four young people who, embarking on the adventure Going from Nebraska to California, they encounter unforeseen situations and who in turn will encounter different characters who, with their own voice and well-defined personality, will open their minds and enrich not only their experience but also the story. In this way, written in a choral manner, the book shows a great variety of personalities that intertwine and feed each other, thus expanding the closed world that a land like Nebraska predicted for them and thus expanding customs and experiences to which the reader accompanies them in their struggles. Unfortunately, those secondary characters that work perfectly when they intervene tangentially in the story lose weight and divert attention from the story when they take part in the narration of the story, when they have their own chapters and each of them also becomes the narrator in the first place. person. Although it is true that such a variety of characters expands the narrative arc, sometimes it does so excessively, perhaps losing focus on the main plot, occasionally leaving aside the true and most interesting characters with the intention of making a novel that deals more themes and points of view. Towles’ intention is evident, since each character has their voice and their motives, their ideals and their vital objectives, but, with the exception of Sally, their appearances break the narrative rhythm and cause the reader, aware that they are secondary characters, to , apart from the interest in the central story. The balance necessary to make it work is difficult and the book achieves it, although only occasionally.