So Long, See You Tomorrow
Ratings6
Average rating3.7
In this magically evocative novel, William Maxwell explores the enigmatic gravity of the past, which compels us to keep explaining it even as it makes liars out of us every time we try. On a winter morning in the 1920s, a shot rings out on a farm in rural Illinois. A man named Lloyd Wilson has been killed. And the tenuous friendship between two lonely teenagers—one privileged yet neglected, the other a troubled farm boy—has been shattered. Fifty years later, one of those boys—now a grown man—tries to reconstruct the events that led up to the murder. In doing so, he is inevitably drawn back to his lost friend Cletus, who has the misfortune of being the son of Wilson's killer and who in the months before witnessed things that Maxwell's narrator can only guess at. Out of memory and imagination, the surmises of children and the destructive passions of their parents, Maxwell creates a luminous American classic of youth and loss.
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Did I miss something? So many 4-5 star ratings. Parts of this book were easily 5 stars, but I was never fully drawn into the book or the story. It reads like a book you're assigned in high school. Something that should be a huge classic, but either it went completely over your head or it's all fluff to make these writing teachers LOVE it.
To me, the paragraphs jumped around too much, the characters were unclear, and hard to keep track of. I didn't care for any of them. I was drawn into the time period and landscape. That portion was easily 5 stars. The story was very realistic and didn't try to cover up the harsh realities of life. Divorces happen, people change. for that I also give 4-5 stars. But what else happened? Someone is killed in the first chapter, then what? Ok. I see it's more about an old man recounting his life.. but then it switches to all these different characters and their lives/perspectives. What happened?! Maybe the point is ‘this is life'. And for that reason nothing really is supposed to happen. Maybe it's more about the after effects and how one person's actions can have such repercussions on everyone around them.
For such as short book, it just couldn't pull it together for me.
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