Itemize Books Supposing So Long, See You Tomorrow
| Original Title: | So Long, See You Tomorrow ISBN13 9781860464188 |
| Edition Language: | English |
| Setting: | Lincoln, Illinois(United States) Illinois(United States) |
| Literary Awards: | Pulitzer Prize Nominee for Fiction (1981), National Book Award for Fiction (Paperback) (1982), William Dean Howells Medal (1980), National Book Critics Circle Award Nominee for Fiction (1980), National Book Award Finalist for Fiction (Hardcover) (1981) Society of Midland Authors Award for Fiction (1980) |
William Maxwell
Paperback | Pages: 135 pages Rating: 3.92 | 8006 Users | 1182 Reviews
Identify Out Of Books So Long, See You Tomorrow
| Title | : | So Long, See You Tomorrow |
| Author | : | William Maxwell |
| Book Format | : | Paperback |
| Book Edition | : | Deluxe Edition |
| Pages | : | Pages: 135 pages |
| Published | : | 1998 by Harvill (first published 1979) |
| Categories | : | Fiction. Historical. Historical Fiction. Classics. Literary Fiction. Novels |
Narrative Concering Books So Long, See You Tomorrow
My heart was sliced to ribbons by this story. The narrator, an elderly man whose boyhood was scarred by a horrendous event, attempts to make sense of it all – and to make amends, as he tells it – 50 years down the road during the course of writing his memoirs.In his memoirs, he talks about his childhood in Lincoln – about losing his mother to the influenza outbreak of 1918. He vividly recalls where they (his father, brothers and himself) lived and how they coped with their loss in their individual ways.
He talks about their home, and how more changes happened once his father re-married. He talks about his school years, his friends – and most of all, he bares all of his childhood feelings from his now 50-year cushion of safe distance in the future.
Through his memories, I felt like I was on a guided tour of history with my hand held snug and warm in his grip. He does warn me, however:
”What we, or at any rate what I, refer to confidently as memory – meaning a moment, a scene, a fact that has been subjected to a fixative and thereby rescued from oblivion – is really a form of storytelling that goes on continually in the mind and often changes with the telling. Too many conflicting emotional interests are involved for life ever to be wholly acceptable, and possibly it is the work of the storyteller to rearrange things so that they conform to this end. In any case, in talking about the past we lie with every breath we draw.” (Quote from the book; emphasis mine.)
So what we readers blithely label (and often dismiss) as an unreliable narrator is most likely every narrator who ever told a story. In other words, there is no such creature as a reliable narrator. This led me to understand that if a “reliable narrator” is what I am looking for in the stories I read, I am likely to be disappointed again and again.
The narrator in this book goes a step or two beyond that. Because they were young, and his friend Cletus’ father murdered a neighbour, the narrator goes on to weave his own memories further to include vividly coloured threads of what might have been happening in Cletus’ family as well as the family of the person murdered.
Despite his warning, despite knowing that he is inventing most of the story, I was completely under the spell of his tale. The emotions are real, the descriptions of two marriages falling apart and failing to re-form in similar or even different configurations are so tangible that I could have been there myself. I wanted to take some of the characters and shake them up; and others I wanted to protect with the ferocity of a mother lion defending her cubs.
William Maxwell’s writing is beautiful – straightforward, raw, immediate – it infiltrated my life like a song whose notes resonate so perfectly with one’s heart and soul that its refrain echoes in memory over and over again.
Rating Out Of Books So Long, See You Tomorrow
Ratings: 3.92 From 8006 Users | 1182 ReviewsWrite-Up Out Of Books So Long, See You Tomorrow
The most heart-breaking novel I've ever read (with John Williams' Stoner a close second). I've read it several times, taught it twice, and the ending never fails to put a lump in my throat.Awesome review, Jaline. Your super enthusiasm has made me add it to my massive TBR.
The wind blows hard across the prairie and into small-town Lincoln, Illinois. You can feel it through the walls.Did I say walls? There might as well not be walls in the farmhouses in Lincoln, Illinois. The gossip blows hard, too. And young boys struggle with the transparent doings of mothers and fathers.William Maxwell uses such a young boy to narrate part of this story. He climbs the carpenter's work of his family's new house, unclothed studs and rafters; and he will be reminded of that years
come on my book is nearly at a hundred likes so pls go ahed and like it
I've said before that the ending of a work can make the work for me, and such is the case here. Not that the beginning wasn't wonderful, it was; in fact, the end reflects back to the beginning, another of my favorite things. And as I approached the end, I lingered over the sentences, rereading them: slight though they may seem, they are so worth it.This slim novel is a perfect example of why a writer writes, how an incident can linger and fester until he works it out of his thoughts and
So long, see you tomorrow. Five words that all of us have said at one time or another. A simple phrase with the intent that tomorrow will come, and everything will be the same. For some of us, though, it doesn't come, and for others, things are irrevocably changed.There is not a wasted word in this short novel, which tells us a great deal about the lives of two young boys who meet at a house under construction, play together there on the beams and scaffolding for a few weeks, then see each other
So. This novel is indisputably a 5-star book by any criterion. Each sentence is one the current crop of MFA-wielding authors dream of having penned. It becomes only more intense, lyrical, disturbing, resonant as it progresses to its end. These 2 friends' reviews do it justice and are lyrical in their own right. https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...Keep your eye on the title. It reminds the reader that Maxwell's focus is on collateral damage, on the
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