Just as I enjoy a good road movie, I love a well turned out road novel. Lots of time for reflection, meeting new characters and maybe a bit of vivid landscape description. Beginning with one that’s named after a road, 
Amor Towles’s The Lincoln Highway is a 1950s American odyssey which takes three young men and an eight-year-old boy on a series of adventures beginning in Nebraska. Seventeen-year-old Emmett has been released from Salina youth detention centre keen to start a new life with his kid brother, but Billy has other ideas which involve driving the Lincoln Highway to San Francisco in the hope of finding their mother. When Duchess and Woolly turn up, newly escaped from Salina, Billy and Emmett find themselves travelling in the opposite direction towards New York City. Towles’s novel is a gripping, hugely entertaining take on Homer’s Odyssey, full of suspense, with a cast of engaging characters of which Billy is the undoubted star.
Considerably less cheerful, Ailsa McFarlane’s Highway Blue sees Cal turn up two years after walking out on Anne Marie with no warning. She’s wary and with reason. Soon, they’re on the run, one of them having shot dead the man pursuing Cal. As they head south, Anne Marie reflects on her short marriage to a man she loves dearly but who has hollowed out her already troubled life. An aching loneliness suffuses this bleakly beautiful novella, delivered in uncluttered, brief sentences from which the occasional gorgeous descriptive paragraph shines out.
Madeleine Watts’s Elegy, Southwest follows Eloise and Lewis over the two weeks they spend tracing the course of the 
Sarah Leipciger returned to her native Canada in Moon Road, the story of a missing girl and her parents, now divorced, who receive news decades after she disappeared. Yannick persuades Kathleen to travel to Vancouver, where Una had been living, to talk to the police. Although we discover what happened to Una, Leipciger’s novel is about her parents rather than her, portraying the upending of their lives by a loss that’s never been resolved with touching compassion and tenderness. Her writing is as striking as I remembered from her previous novels, glorious descriptions of the natural world shining out from elegantly pared back prose reminding me of her debut, The Mountain Can Wait.
Any road novels you’d particularly recommend?
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I too love a road novel. I’ve read the first and last on your list – loved both. I’m adding the other three to my wishlist. Inspired by the road trip that didn’t happen in All Fours – the last starter book for Six Degrees – all my choices that month were proper road trips https://annabookbel.net/six-degrees-of-separation-all-fours-by-miranda-july/
I remember that now, Annabel. You may have put the thought in my mind. Thanks for the link.
If you had your choose one of these as your today favourite road trip novel, which one would you go for?
I haven’t read any of them and struggling to think of any I have read apart from On the Road, but I’m thinking there is one sitting unread on my shelf, Lost Children Archive by Valeria Luiselli. I must dust it off for a summer read!
That would be Highway Blue for its gorgeous descriptive passages and dreamlike quality.
You could certainly describe the Luiselli as a road novel. A tough read but a rewarding one.
Great selection. I just loved Elegy, Southwest and still think about how well she handled so many different strands in the book. I must check out Towles book. I have enjoyed Less is Lost by Andrew Sean Greer. I usually read non-fiction road books. Some great authors have written about their experiences including Jack Kerouac, Jenny Diski, Paul Theroux.
Watts is definitely a writer to watch, isn’t she. Diski’s one of my favourite travel writers even though she seemed to dislike it. She’s a sad loss to writing.
Excellent reviews. I am very interested in Elegy. I’d recommend Greyhound by Steffan Piper. News of the World by Paulette Jiles and My Friends by Fredrik Backman, among others. I’ve done a few road trip posts–I usually enjoy road trip books.
Thank you. I’ll check those out
I’ve reviewed them all. If you are on a laptop there is a search feature on my blog. Or just tell me if you want a link.
Happy for you to drop a link into the comments on here.
Greyhound https://hopewellslibraryoflife.wordpress.com/2015/09/25/road-trip-reads-three-favorite-travel-and-road-trip-books/
https://hopewellslibraryoflife.wordpress.com/2015/09/25/road-trip-reads-three-favorite-travel-and-road-trip-books/
My Friends review coming either Wednesday or next week
Unfortunately road trips are a trope I avoid – I think it’s because I really love set piece, close, confined settings, and the road trip is often the opposite of that. I also find the plots can become quite episodic. One exception was The Lauras by Sara Taylor, which worked really well for me.
I enjoy episodic narratives so perhaps that’s part of the appeal for me. I liked The Lauras too. I’ve not seen anything new from Taylor since it was published.
I was just thinking that! What a shame.
I know! I enjoyed The Shore, too.
I loved Moon Road, but haven’t read any of your other choices. The only other road-novel I can call to mind is … er … The Road. The Cormac McCarthy . It wade quite an impression on me, though I read it ages ago.
Some lovely landscape descriptions in Moon Road. I remember avoiding The Road when it was published (a bit too grim) but I gather it’s impressive.
It is. And though The Road describes difficult things, I don’t remember being so much depressed as impressed by the father’s and son’s resilience.
Perhaps I should get over my dystopia antipathy!
You knome well enough to have realised I do’t ‘do’ dystopia either. I don’t see this book as dystopian. More a study o a father and son brought together by awful cirmstances/ Here’s the review I wrote on Goodreads, back in the day when I used this platform: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6288.The_Road?ac=1&from_search=true&qid=Lx5LXmjIgR&rank=1
Thank you. I’ll check it out. I trust your judgement
Oh, thank you! *blushes modestly*.
I really enjoyed Butterflies in November too. Amor Towles is someone I keep meaning to try – would this be a good place to start?
It’s a hoot isn’t it. Either this one or Rules of Civility. I couldn’t get on with A Gentleman in Moscow but I know I’m in the minority on that.
Road trip books allow for a certain amount of armchair travel, which I enjoy.
Me, too, particularly in winter.
I have just added Butterflies in November to my TBR. It sounds like a lot of fun!
I have read The Lincoln Highway from your list and liked it a lot!
I like a road trip novel, although I do tend to read on the lighter end of the spectrum when it comes to road trips!
Bit if a mix of light and dark with these five. Butterflies is very enjoyable although I don’t think I’ll be experimenting with the recipes!
Like someone else commented, I’ve only read the first and last. As a teenager, I read On the Road but didn’t fall for Kerouac in the end; the first road novel I remember loving was a debut by a Canadian writer (likely not well known overseas, Miss You Like Crazy, by Eliza Clark, a mother-daughter story, but even though it’s a road trip novel they don’t actually travel together…spoiler). I think Mona Simpson had a good road trip novel too though (am I remembering right, that you’re fond of her?).
Same here re Kerouac who needed a few lessons on how to behave with women. The Eliza Clark sounds interesting and you’re quite right about Mona Simpson. I read Anywhere But Here so long ago I’d forgotten all about it. Very happy to have been reminded!