a book
So Long, See You Tomorrow
William Maxwell · 1980 · 144 pages
"A small, perfect novel." ―Washington Post Book World
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.
"William Maxwell is one of the past half-century's unmistakably great novelists." ―Village Voice
"What a lovely book, utterly unlike any other in shape I have ver read." ―John Updike
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.
"William Maxwell is one of the past half-century's unmistakably great novelists." ―Village Voice
"What a lovely book, utterly unlike any other in shape I have ver read." ―John Updike
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Michael Ondaatje
“The book begins in Illinois and follows the story of how the past—a mother’s death, a love affair that takes place between two neighboring couples—devastates a boy who is the central character for the rest of his life. Stunningly written, it is a great American novel. One you will never forget and will return to.”↗