y, two friends from the juvenile facility.

These two characters and their lives are revealed intermittently throughout the book, and by the end of the book, their fates had me in tears. I really felt for these two young men, who never really had a chance to develop their own lives. Circumstances created these people and brought each to a point of no return.

So how do Emmett and Billy manage to get back on track—back on the Lincoln Highway, so to speak?

Read this book!30:T5d1,I was blown away by Towles’s writing and storytelling. This is the kind of book I will be rereading. It’s immersive, original, and deep.

I was enamored especially with the characters of Billy, the intelligent 8-year-old who has a love for heroic stories, and Ulysses, a man whose life mirrors that of his namesake, Odysseus, very closely. I loved Emmett (I’m a sucker for older brother guardian characters) and Wooly as well, and Duchess really grew on me. Sally, our token female character, had very well-written chapters with striking lines, though I wonder what the purpose of her character was overall.

Most of the story gives a delightful yet poignant folk vibe that I couldn’t get enough of. It was the kind of story I never wanted to end and warranted its page count.

But the ending. I don’t know what to make of it. It leaves me feeling empty, when I felt like everything before it urged you to hold on to the ounce of hope, the ambiguity in your future that could lead to something you’ve been longing for for a long time.

But I can’t quite wrap my mind around this jarring final chapter. I want to trust Towles and that he didn’t just use it for shock value, so I’m going to spend some time thinking about it and how it impacts the message of the novel as a whole!

Would definitely recommend this book. I struggled greatly between choosing 4 or 5 stars for my rating. I will gladly pick up Towles’s other books.

The Lincoln Highway - Likewise Book Reviews

8 Reviews