RaveThe New York Times Book ReviewAs it turns out, not reaching the intended destination becomes entirely the point and power of this mischievous, wise and wildly entertaining novel ... Towles goes all in on the kind of episodic, exuberant narrative haywire found in myth or Homeric epic. The novel opens wide, detours beget detours, the point of view expands and rotates ... It’s tempting to speak of the book’s cast of minor characters, though one gradually learns that there are no minor characters. Each one of them, Towles implies, is the central protagonist of an ongoing adventure that is both unique and universal ... At nearly 600 pages, The Lincoln Highway is remarkably brisk, remarkably buoyant. Though dark shadows fall across its final chapters, the book is permeated with light, wit, youth ... when we look through his lens we see that this brief interstice teems with stories, grand as legends.
T.C. Boyle
MixedThe New York Times Book Review\"This novel is not, it must be said, full of surprises. As it turns out, constant drug use and free love may not be good for your marriage, family or academic career. If you’ve studied history — or if you’ve read other Boyle novels — you know well the arc of utopia ... the drug use of Boyle’s psychonauts seems, almost immediately, decadent and dull. The trips are amazing, but they don’t lead anywhere ... LSD does not radically alter Fitz’s sober perspective, at least not in an appealing way. Consequently, the novel’s trajectory is not pronounced, and the inevitable dissolution of the community is less compelling ... [Boyle] is a spirited downhill writer, capable of creating energy by virtue of his own pace and verve, and that is certainly the case here. This is not the best T. C. Boyle novel, but it’s without question a T. C. Boyle novel — kinetic, conceptual and keen. Moreover, when you take a step back from the book you can begin to appreciate that Boyle — much in the spirit of his quixotic and ambitious subjects — has now completed his own impressive public art project: a Mount Rushmore of American Fanatics.\
Nathaniel Rich
RaveThe New York Times Book Review...ambitious and metaphorically dense... Rich, a resident of New Orleans, throws his arms wide open to history and to the city, and King Zeno, particularly in its first half, is as unruly and laterally active as a big urban novel ought to be. And the novel, like a city, somehow coheres, as Rich never loses control of the riotous raw material. The close third-person point of view rotates among three central figures, providing pattern and the promise of convergence; the mysterious ax murders serve as a narrative through-line; the canal exerts centripetal and allegorical force; and the extraordinary American yearning of the characters... Despite his large canvas, Rich is a gifted portraitist of his three main characters ... This is a novel with a high body count, but it has far too much energy ever to feel morbid ... The resolution is exciting and tense, and yet after all of the novel’s artful chaos, it feels like a diminution.
Tom Perrotta
RaveThe New York Times Book Review\"Mrs. Fletcher operates and succeeds in ways that will be pleasingly familiar to his admirers. It uses a fecund premise, a large cast of recognizable characters, a rotating point of view, a propulsive plot, a humane vision and clean, non-ostentatious (if occasionally uninspired) prose to explore a fraught cultural topic. There be dragons, yes, but decency mitigates the danger. Mrs. Fletcher is the sweetest and most charming novel about pornography addiction and the harrowing issues of sexual consent that you will probably ever read ... Perrotta steers through this miry slough with skill, sensitivity and good-natured confidence...A male writer’s depiction of a woman’s obsession with pornography risks prurience, but Perrotta consistently keeps his eyes up here — on Eve’s mind — and he does not reduce her to her sexuality. And while the allegorical shoe certainly fits (her name is Eve and she enjoys forbidden fruits), Perrotta’s tender attention keeps her round and real.\
