So Long, See You Tomorrow

So Long, See You Tomorrow is another autofiction, recounting the life of its writer back when he befriended a young classmate when he was a schoolboy. Tragedy ensues and the writer never encounters the classmate again despite sharing a meaningful moment of connection when they were young. This meaningful moment is so memorable to the writer (and audience) that it transforms into the book's thematic understanding of connection.

This book is beautifully human. Again, it's not largeness of plot that brings out the life of these characters. The way they connect and speak about one another, the way they react… show more.

In So Long, See You Tomorrow, an adult narrator looks back at childhood and the lingering effects of childhood loss and displacement. He recalls his mother’s death, his father’s remarriage, and moving from a beloved home. The author also tells a parallel story of the scandal that befell his friend Cletus: his father shot his mother’s lover, and then drowned himself. For the narrator, his lost boyhood home is recalled like a dream of paradise lost, a mirage of another life: “I dream about it, the proportions are so satisfying to the eye and the rooms so bright, so… show more.

I love this book for its depiction of 1920s rural Illinois and its beautiful writing. My father was a boy during the 1920s, and this story of two friends, their friendship tested by a murder, connects with what I imagine my father’s boyhood to have been like and gives me insight into what he kept guarded throughout his life. Maxwell’s narrator reconstructs the facts of the murder in a way that keeps me on the edge of my seat in this story of youth and loss.