terkvm.blogg.se

Emmett wants to pay his bills, load what they have left into their car, an old Studebaker, and drive the Lincoln Highway to East to California – since Nebraska is sort of in the middle of the country. His only remaining family is his young brother, Billy, who has been in Sally Ransom’s care.

The farm has been foreclosed on by the bank, his father has died. The story takes place in June 1954, when Emmett arrives back at his family’s farm in Nebraska.

Some chapters are narrated by secondary characters such as “Sally Ransom”, the likeable, feisty daughter of a neighbour. The four main characters are 18-year-old “Emmett Watson”, fresh out of prison for involuntary manslaughter his 8-year-old brother, “Billy Watson” a friend of Emmett’s from his time in prison, called “Duchess” (named after a place, not a title) and Duchess’s friend and hanger-on, “Woolly”. The explains why it is that the novel is so long, while the story takes place over only a ten-day period.įurthermore, what makes it more different and complicated is that every chapter, in each part, is told from the perspective of a different character. Every moment, every conversation between the characters, their every thought, are described in detail, as if one were not reading a story but looking at a map that is slowly being rolled out – places, names, numbers, incidents all precisely tied together, minute by minute, stops marked with a star or an X. In The Lincoln Highway, Towles writes in that same style: precise, clear, and elegant, with words chosen to suit the period in which the novel is set. They have a very different plan for Emmett’s future, one that will take the four of them on a fateful journey in the opposite direction – to New York City.īursting with life, charm, richly imagined settings and unforgettable characters, The Lincoln Highway is an extraordinary journey through 1950s America from the pen of a master storyteller.The Lincoln Highway, by Amor Towles (Publisher: ‎Viking Oct.

With his mother long gone, his father recently deceased, and the family farm foreclosed upon by the bank, Emmett plans to pick up his eight-year-old brother Billy and head to California to start a new life.īut when the warden drives away, Emmett discovers that two friends from the work farm have stowed away in the trunk of the warden’s car. In June, 1954, eighteen-year-old Emmett Watson is driven home to Nebraska by the warden of the juvenile work farm where he has just served fifteen months for involuntary manslaughter.