I want a... road trip novel
Road trip novels transport us - from everyday life to an adventure, all without having to leave home. Here are some of our favourites.
The Lincoln Highway by Amor Towles
When 18-year-old Emmett Watson is released from a juvenile work farm in Kansas, he returns to his family farm in rural Nebraska, where he has to deal with the recent death of his father and the bank's foreclosure on their property. His plan is to pick up his intelligent and earnest 8-year-old brother, Billy, and drive his beloved 1948 Studebaker west on the Lincoln Highway to California for a fresh start. Billy, who carries with him a treasured book of heroic stories, believes they will find their long-lost mother in San Francisco. However, their journey is immediately derailed when two of Emmett's friends from the work farm are discovered to have stowed away in the trunk of the warden's car. A story of brotherhood, friendship, and self-discovery that takes place over just ten days in 1954.
An unnamed man and his young son journey on foot through a post-apocalyptic United States. The world has been destroyed, leaving a landscape of ash, burnt trees, and a permanent grey sky. All animals and plants have died, and most of humanity has descended into cannibalism and brutal violence. The novel is a series of encounters and near-misses, with the father and son clinging to their humanity and their deep bond. The father's main goal is to keep the boy alive and to teach him to "carry the fire"—a metaphor for the last vestiges of hope, morality, and goodness in a world without them. A powerful and unsettling novel that takes the traditional road trip narrative and strips it of its usual elements, transforming it into a stark and devastating meditation on survival, love, and humanity.
I Who Have Never Known Men by Jacqueline Harpman
Watched silently by male guards, 40 women are kept underground and have no knowledge of why they are there, or what the world outside is like. The women have vague, fragmented memories of a life before, but the narrator, a child at the time of her imprisonment, has only ever known this existence. One day, an alarm sounds, and the guards disappear, leaving the women's cage unlocked. The narrator is the first to venture out, and the women find themselves in a vast, barren, and empty landscape. The world is desolate, with no signs of life, other than similar bunkers scattered across the plain. As they travel, they create a community and learn to survive by salvaging food and supplies from the other abandoned bunkers. Harpman takes the physical act of a journey and transforms it into a heart-breaking and deeply philosophical exploration of solitude, memory, and the unyielding human desire for meaning in an indifferent universe.
The 100-Year-Old Man Who Climbed out the Window and Disappeared by Jonas Jonasson
On the day of Allan Karlsson's 100th birthday, while a big party with the mayor and local press is being planned in his honour, Allan climbs out his window in his slippers and disappears. This impulsive act sets off a chaotic and hilarious chain of events. With a suitcase full of cash he unintentionally acquires at a bus station, Allan begins a journey across Sweden, gathering a motley crew of companions, including a professional thief, an incompetent hot dog stand vendor, a studious woman, and an elephant. This unlikely group is pursued by both a clueless police inspector and a vengeful drug gang. Woven into this present-day adventure are extensive flashbacks to Allan's extraordinary life, a comical and improbable historical tour, in which he inadvertently influences major 20th-century events and befriends political leaders from around the world, including Harry S. Truman, Joseph Stalin, and Mao Zedong. This is a road trip story that celebrates the randomness of life.
Widely considered a defining text of the Beat Generation and a precursor to the counterculture movements of the 1960s, The Road is a semi-autobiographical account of a restless generation searching for meaning, freedom, and authentic experience in a post-World War II America they felt was becoming increasingly conformist. It remains as relevant to the youth of today as it was 60 years ago. Kerouac uses the road trip a powerful metaphor for spiritual, personal, and cultural rebellion. It is a raw, energetic, and influential novel that celebrates the open highway as a place of endless possibility and a canvas for the restless young soul.
Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel
A fascinating and complex novel that uses the framework of a road trip to explore profound themes of memory, art, and what it means to be human in the aftermath of civilisation's collapse. While it contains many of the elements of a traditional road trip novel, it subverts and elevates the genre in several key ways. Set across two timelines - the 'before' focussing on famous but flawed actor Arthur Leander and the various people whose lives he touches, and the 'after', which is set twenty years later in a world where the vat majority of humanity have died in a sudden and vicious virus. The main characters in this timeline are members of the Traveling Symphony, a nomadic troupe of actors and musicians who travel between sparse settlements, performing Shakespeare and classical music, keeping human culture alive.
Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir
Ryland Grace, a middle school science teacher and former molecular biologist, wakes up on a spaceship with no memory of his name, his mission, or how he got there. He soon pieces together the horrifying truth: humanity is on the brink of extinction at the hands of the 'Astrophage', a micro organism sucking the life from the sun. With a catastrophic ice age looming, all of Earth's resources were pooled into a desperate, last-ditch mission—Project Hail Mary—to travel to the Tau Ceti star system, where a star has inexplicably resisted the Astrophage. Ryland is the sole survivor of the mission, and it's up to him to find a solution and send it back to Earth. Project Hail Mary is a road trip novel in disguise, it takes the familiar elements of the genre the journey, the found family, the quest for self-discovery—and sets them against a backdrop of cosmic stakes and hard science. This is a thrilling sci-fi adventure and a moving story about the power of friendship and human (and alien) ingenuity in the face of impossible odds.
The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet by Becky Chambers
Rosemary Harper is a young human woman who, fleeing a difficult past, takes a job as a clerk on a tunnelling ship called the Wayfarer, crewed by a diverse and eclectic group of humans and aliens from various species, each with their own unique personalities, customs, and backgrounds. The crew's long-term mission is to build a hyperspace tunnel to a distant, and politically volatile, planet named Hedra Ka. The journey is incredibly long, taking them across vast stretches of space and through various star systems. Along the way, they encounter a range of adventures, from dealing with pirate attacks and political skirmishes to making pit stops on vibrant alien planets and experiencing different cultures. Through these interactions, Rosemary finds a sense of belonging and a new family, and the crew learns to navigate their differences and rely on each other. The first novel in Chambers' celebrated Wayfarers series is set in a sprawling, futuristic universe with alien species and advanced technology but at its core is a perfect example of a warm-hearted road trip novel, transplanted into a cosmic setting.
