For May, The Pageturners met again at Fairfield Centre and saw all 10 members in attendance. The group had a very lively and thoughtful discussion on The Lincoln Highway by Amor Towles.
The Lincoln Highway written by Amor Towles
Reviewed by Norma Bandler
The Lincoln Highway by Amor Towles is a New York Times Best Seller. It has been called the Great American Road Novel that tails four boys — three 18-year-olds who met in a juvenile reformatory, plus a brainy 8-year-old — as they set out from Nebraska in June, 1954, in an old Studebaker in pursuit of a better future.
In The Lincoln Highway, the writer begins in June 1954 when 18-year-old Emmett Watson is driven home to Nebraska by the warden of a juvenile work farm where he has just served fifteen months for involuntary manslaughter. His mother long gone, his father recently deceased, and the family farm foreclosed upon by the bank, Emmett’s intention is to pick up his 8-year-old brother Billy and head to California where they can start their lives anew.
Billy has received postcards over the years from his mother, and believes she can be found in the west. But when the warden drives away, Emmett discovers that two friends from the work farm have hidden themselves in the trunk of the warden’s car, only to escape onto the farm without being detected. They have hatched an altogether different plan for Emmett’s future, one that will take them all on a fateful journey in the opposite direction – to the city of New York.
Spanning just ten days and told from multiple points of view, Towles’s third novel will satisfy fans of his multi-layered literary styling while providing them an array of new and richly imagined settings, characters and themes.
Amor Towles also wrote A Gentleman in Moscow as well as Rules of Civility which many of us have likely read.
Probus Club of Kingsway-Islington 