So Long, See You Tomorrow: National Book Award Winner

Good

Sometimes hard to keep track of the characters because the story meanders among them. The dog broke my heart.Interesting approach but not my favorite.

. . . but still we are haunted by it. By the memories of commonplace objects, events, and places from our youth. And by the recollection of minor failings of our youthful self - instances when, in retrospect, we wish we had acted differently (and acting differently truly was within the realm of possible behavior; it would not have required anything gallant or extraordinary on our part).That is the subject of William Maxwell's gem, SO LONG, SEE YOU TOMORROW. The setting of the story is 1921 in Lincoln, Illinois. The book begins with the nameless narrator telling the story of events of his boyhood from the perspective, and with the imperfect memory, of fifty years hence. He first tells of the murder of a farmer, shot in the early morning while milking cows in his barn. He acknowledges that the event would not bulk so large in memory if "(1) the murderer hadn't been the father of somebody I knew, and (2) I hadn't later on done something I was ashamed of afterward." It is soon revealed who the murderer was - Clarence Smith, the farmer on the adjoining farm, with whose son the narrator had recently formed a boyhood friendship. But the second mystery - whatever the narrator had done that he was ashamed of - is not really made clear until the end of the book. Well before then, the story, now proceeding in the form of an omniscient third-person narrative, has been transformed into an imaginative reconstruction of how the close friendship of Lloyd Wilson and Clarence Smith was sundered by Wilson's obsession with Smith's wife Fern (which she welcomed), and how both families unraveled after their affair became known.William Maxwell was born in Lincoln, Illinois in 1908, and many of the biographical facts of the narrator (for example, his mother dying of influenza after giving birth to a younger brother and his family then moving from his childhood home) are facts of Maxwell's life. Certainly many of the plangent memories of boyhood contained in the novel are Maxwell's memories, and their telling evokes for me (and I am sure, mutatis mutandis, for others as well) memories of my own boyhood - utterly prosaic matters, but because they are the details from life at such an innocent time, full of promise of the life ahead, their irretrievable pastness is now keenly felt and missed.For the most part (the far greater part) the writing is superb. Spare and simple, wise and tender. I have two minor complaints. First, there are a few instances in which the book is over-written, where Maxwell gave too free rein to his authorial skills for what the story could bear. Second, I was somewhat irritated by the way he wrung a little extra (and therefore false) pathos from his story by telling snippets of it from the perspective of Trixie, an abandoned farmdog. Perfection in fiction is rare, but in SO LONG, SEE YOU TOMORROW Maxwell approximates it.

"So long" and "See you tomorrow," and went our separate ways in the dusk. And one evening this casual parting turned out to be for the last time. We were separated by that pistol shot." (p. 31). Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.The unnamed narrator is researching and recalling a friendship, a murder, and relationships among tenant farmer families in Lincoln, Illinois, during the 1920s. Fifty years after they occurred, he relies on memory, newspaper articles, and archives to piece together the story and events that have been haunting him and occupying his therapy sessions.The storyteller did not have friends as a child and adolescent and believes he betrayed his only true friend, Cletus. The tale is dark and explores youthful friendships as well as bullying, loneliness, and guilt. The narrator suffered several childhood tragedies, including the death of his mother, and his misfortunes occurred while he witnessed but did not fully comprehend the marriages and divorces of Cletus's parents and those of Lloyd and Marie Wilson, neighbors and fellow tenant farmers. He is convinced as an older adult that having a better understanding of the relationships will set his mind at ease.The author mentions more than once that childhood memories are often inaccurate, and children rarely have all aspects of a story in their mental databases. Also, the concept of home, figuratively and literally, and the loss of "home" and its accompanying security as a child, figure into the novel's essence. Thus, this national book award winner is the author's semi-autobiographical narration of a sad endeavor to recreate the past, make amends with his friend and settle his conscience. Maxwell forces us to consider times we have assumed we could see someone "tomorrow" and life interfered.

A wonderful tale of how an adolescent deals with tragedy and its eaffect on his entire life. A Delightful read.

Indulge me, this isn’t really a review (this book is absolutely fantastic, and it’s been in the world for 44 years) I’m going to tell you how I finally came to read it!This is how reading begets reading: I just finished Sarah Braunstein’s wonderful new novel “Bad Animals” and her protagonist (a librarian) refers to several real novels in the story, and one she particularly talks about in an intriguing way is “So Long, See You Tomorrow”, by William Maxwell (1980).So, I did a search on it and found a short video of Ann Patchett praising it as one of her favorites and noting that it’s quite short.So, I went to Amazon to order a used copy and discovered that I had already purchased it in 2018! (Thanks for that feature, Ammy!)I have no recollection of ordering it or why I did…but sure enough, there it was buried in a stack on my “To Be Read” nightstand!It’s a beautiful and poignant story, and Maxwell’s writing is utterly sublime. It’s a short novel: not one word too many nor too few.So, thank you Sarah B. and Ann P. for the nudge to finally rescue this gem from the stacks! It was as great as you said it would be!