🟨 So Long, See You Tomorrow (1980) Review - When You're a Star, They Let You Do It | Book Waffle
So Long, See You Tomorrow (1980) written by William Maxwell
This is a hard one to rate. First, Maxwell commits a writing cardinal sin by starting with the climax and then rewinding. He justifies this by having a memoir-ish structure. Bold, I grant you. Not sure if it was all that effective or necessary though.But I'm getting ahead of myself. So Long, See You Tomorrow follows the story of a regretful old man looking back on his life in rural Illinois. Specifically, he recalls the murder of a local man and the fallout this had on his boyhood relationship with Cletus, the son of the murderer. The narrator then spins a story about love and loss that he believes led up to the unfortunate event at the start of the novel. Is it true? Probably not. Does it have a kernel of truth in it? We don't know.
Indeed, even the author admits that people have a habit of lying. So we're stuck in a kind of limbo bimbo state as we traverse the novel not knowing who to trust. What to trust. What really happened and what didn't. This makes it one of the more effective setups for unreliable narration that I've come across, and, paradoxically, it accomplishes this explicitly because the narrator is up-front about being a liar. That or he's forgotten the details. Dementia's a bitch after all.
Despite it's relatively short length, this story is packed with information and is a very slow burn. The cast is large, and with such little action going on, it can be hard to differentiate the names. I admit, as a filthy Gen Z-er, it tested my attention span. Furthermore, the prose is often unclear or ambiguous.
That said, this book (once it finally gets going) is absolutely heartbreaking. So much so that I was compelled to read it all in one single sitting. There is no tension because of the aforementioned sin; we know how this will end. But as an emotional experience, I think this book did a pretty good number on me, even if I was bored out of my mind for the first half.
Despite it's relatively short length, this story is packed with information and is a very slow burn. The cast is large, and with such little action going on, it can be hard to differentiate the names. I admit, as a filthy Gen Z-er, it tested my attention span. Furthermore, the prose is often unclear or ambiguous.
That said, this book (once it finally gets going) is absolutely heartbreaking. So much so that I was compelled to read it all in one single sitting. There is no tension because of the aforementioned sin; we know how this will end. But as an emotional experience, I think this book did a pretty good number on me, even if I was bored out of my mind for the first half.
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