It is not surprising that Amor Towles (Boston, 1964) entitled his first work (and in my opinion his best work) Rules of courtesy because the guiding principle of his books would seem to be to give the reader the maximum attention: carry him in the wings, entertain him , encourage him, excite him, educate him a little... in short, provide him with a rewarding experience. With his third novel, after the great sales success of A Gentleman in Moscow, he reaffirms his talent for choral and period stories defined by charm, the latter springing from a myriad of sub-stories deployed with hook, from seductive characters and from the constant attention to the enriching minutiae.
Set in a few days in 1954, The Lincoln Highway mixes adventures and picaresque, fraternal and friendship ties, praises of adventure and reading, and the celebration of a lost America and the figure of the hustler and the dreamer, through all the obstacles to be faced by two brothers who aspire to come to California from Nebraska to start anew. What matters, of course, is the journey, and since it is long for everyone (thousands of kilometers for them, almost 600 pages for us), the author enlivens it with the tricks of a great narrator (it happens a lot, surprises and turns, the narrators take turns and there is no facilitator of the story who does not manage to get on board) so that no one falls asleep.
Although the narrative is systematically going full steam ahead, the prose is exemplary of elegance, and witty scenes and cues abound, there are moments when Towles may lose out on making it too charming, or shoring up the comforting message, or applying a new layer of cuteness. One of the protagonists seems to be talking about it when he justifies a lie in this way: “It was what we could call an embellishment: a small and inoffensive exaggeration for the sake of emphasis (…) Those details that are apparently unnecessary, but that somehow manage to a performance leaves you embroidered ”.
In any case, it is very likely that this does not bother most readers, that is, that unnecessary details go unnoticed and they consider the exhibition embroidered (something that works very much in favor of the author's novels is that their degree of success as a gift for Sant Jordi it could reach 90%) because the novelist has something of the magicians that always show up in his plots: a generous palette of tricks to minimize the chances of being caught wrong.
The Lincoln Highway reminds us that life is an adventure that must have the courage to face, that dreams are to be pursued, that redemption exists, that the purity of heart of childhood is a treasure to be recovered and that books are a refuge from any inclement weather, and all aboard a vehicle, real and metaphorical, reliable, comfortable, fast and lucid. When he arrives at his destination, he will surely feel reconciled with life and with a good taste in his mouth. Who could be soured by such a sweet?
