Towles tells the story from each of these character’s perspectives. He struggled to fit in, was prescribed “medicine”, and always seemed to fail those closest to him, especially family. Wooly grew up in a waspy and aristocratic family, but life was never easy for him. He was dropped off at an orphanage as a young boy. These two characters – Duchess and Wooly – enrich the story, both because of their different backgrounds and opposite dispositions.ĭuchess is street smart from growing up in cities, clubs, and bars while his thespian father dragged him around the country, until he didn’t.
They had escaped the juvenile work farm and stowed away in the car that brought Emmett home. Two other characters join them, or more accurately, invite themselves on the journey. His little brother, Billy, is waiting for him, with dreams of finding their mother who had abandoned the family a few years prior when she moved to California. Towles drops you right in on the action as the elder brother, Emmett, returns home after serving time on a juvenile work farm. Remember that phrase when you read the book. Like any good adventure tale it begins in medias res. The Lincoln Highway explores similar themes, except instead of telling them from inside a historic Moscow hotel ( Metropol Hotel Moscow), the setting is 1950s America. “A man must master his circumstances or otherwise be mastered by them.” As Count Alexander Ilyich Rostov said in Amor Towles’ previous bestseller, A Gentleman In Moscow: Events largely out of their control forced them to react and adapt.
Towles presented the story as an adventure two brothers were planning to take along this historic highway, which was the first American interstate to stretch from coast-to-coast.įor them, life did not go as planned. That was my experience reading The Lincoln Highway as well.
0 kommentar(er)
