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A review by literarycrushes
This Time Tomorrow by Emma Straub
4.0
This Time Tomorrow by Emma Straub is not a book about illness, but it is about grief – specifically a very strange subset of pre-grief that deals with the emotional toll of losing a person who is still physically with you. It is also a love letter to city kids and the specific nostalgia for growing up in New York City when you still live there, and how it is (or you are) the same, but also totally different.
On the surface, it’s a time travel novel that begins on the night of Alice’s 40th birthday. After a few too many shots, she inadvertently discovers a portal that can transport her to the day of her 16th birthday. Rather than immediately freaking out about this, it comforts Alice, because if she’s 16 that means her father is 49 and healthy rather than the comatose version that exists in her future reality. Without sounding overly sentimental or cheesy, Straub creates characters who are both pragmatic yet tender. I haven’t read many excellent books that focus on father-daughter relationships until this one.
The other theme it deals with is a popular one in recent media (done so well in the movie Everything, Everywhere All at Once and less so in Marvel’s Multiverse), is this idea of our alternate selves and how, over time, your life is affected by all the decisions you’ve made. Everyone wonders what their life might be like if they hadn’t quit that job, or stayed with that person, or whatever, and I think this book was a refreshing mediation on those questions because Alice doesn’t really view the choices she made with regret. This book will probably make you cry, but it's also beautiful because it ultimately leaves you (or left me, anyway) feeling hopeful!
And bonus points because it reminded me of Altoid Sours, the smell of Hot & Crusty, and the massive burgers at Jackson Hole for the first time in years!
On the surface, it’s a time travel novel that begins on the night of Alice’s 40th birthday. After a few too many shots, she inadvertently discovers a portal that can transport her to the day of her 16th birthday. Rather than immediately freaking out about this, it comforts Alice, because if she’s 16 that means her father is 49 and healthy rather than the comatose version that exists in her future reality. Without sounding overly sentimental or cheesy, Straub creates characters who are both pragmatic yet tender. I haven’t read many excellent books that focus on father-daughter relationships until this one.
The other theme it deals with is a popular one in recent media (done so well in the movie Everything, Everywhere All at Once and less so in Marvel’s Multiverse), is this idea of our alternate selves and how, over time, your life is affected by all the decisions you’ve made. Everyone wonders what their life might be like if they hadn’t quit that job, or stayed with that person, or whatever, and I think this book was a refreshing mediation on those questions because Alice doesn’t really view the choices she made with regret. This book will probably make you cry, but it's also beautiful because it ultimately leaves you (or left me, anyway) feeling hopeful!
And bonus points because it reminded me of Altoid Sours, the smell of Hot & Crusty, and the massive burgers at Jackson Hole for the first time in years!