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A review by carriepond
This Time Tomorrow by Emma Straub
emotional
hopeful
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.75
At the opening of This Time Tomorrow, Alice Stern is about to turn forty. She feels fine enough about how life's turned out so far: she's still close with her best friend since high school, Sam, though get-togethers are rarer since Sam moved to New Jersey and started a family; she works at the private school she attended as a kid and gets along well with her co-workers; and though her romantic life doesn't blow her away, she feels content enough with it. All is just fine, except that her father, Leonard, who solo parented her after her mother left when she was six, is dying and Alice knows that his death will send her reeling. After a drunken fortieth birthday celebration, Alice wanders to her childhood home and passes out in the garden shed. When she wakes to find herself in her childhood bedroom on the morning of her sixteenth birthday, she is most amazed to see her father-- forty-nine, youthful and vibrant. Alice decides that she must take advantage of the opportunity: to spend time appreciating her dad and to try to set in motion changes that will save him-- eat healthier, quit smoking, and exercise. As Alice struggles to understand the implications of her new reality and unravel the mystery of what transported her back in time, she mediates on who she is and how she got there, her love and grief for her father, and how to move forward if she can always go back.
I have definitely thought about how great it could be to travel back to a random day in my childhood, to experience the security and certainty of a less encumbered time. And, since becoming a mom, I already have also wished to revisit, just for a day, when my daughter was a newborn, when she was just starting to walk, etc. In This Time Tomorrow, we watch this opportunity play out, and the result is just lovely. It was a compelling story with authentic characters and was such a love letter about the bond between a parent and child. It made me cry as a child to a parent; it made me cry as a parent to a child. You could feel the earnestness and genuineness with every page, and I loved how Straub ended the novel; open-ended, bittersweet but hopeful.
I have definitely thought about how great it could be to travel back to a random day in my childhood, to experience the security and certainty of a less encumbered time. And, since becoming a mom, I already have also wished to revisit, just for a day, when my daughter was a newborn, when she was just starting to walk, etc. In This Time Tomorrow, we watch this opportunity play out, and the result is just lovely. It was a compelling story with authentic characters and was such a love letter about the bond between a parent and child. It made me cry as a child to a parent; it made me cry as a parent to a child. You could feel the earnestness and genuineness with every page, and I loved how Straub ended the novel; open-ended, bittersweet but hopeful.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Death of parent