Rating: 
Summary: Appealing in all ways...
Review: A captivating novela, "So Long, See You Tommorow" would appeal to any reader in numerous ways. Its true-to-life issues are easily relatable and constantly reflect in daily life. The narrator, arguably Maxwell himself, recounts events from his past. The one-hundred thirty-five page length does not allow for ambiguousness, and Maxwell manages to tell his story concisely without giving the feeling that something is missing. I read "So Long, See You Tomorrow" for my high school English class not expecting anything as enthralling as this book. I consider it one of the most readable books in my collection and highly recommend it for a quick, but thought provoking read.
Rating:
Summary: Substitutions in lieu of considerations.
Review: Has there been an incident in your life that, however insignificant it may seem on the surface, has haunted you for years, making you wish you could do something, anything to change what happened and resolve the guilt you feel? If your answer is yes, then you have something in common with the narrator in William Maxwell's So Long, See You Tomorrow. As a boy, the narrator was an introvert, largely because of the untimely death of his mother and subsequent alienation from his father. His one friend at the time was a boy named Cletus. Not long after they become friends, Cletus's father kills a man for having an affair with his wife. This effectively puts a stop to the boys' friendship, and soon afterward Cletus moves away. Later, the narrator goes away to school, coincidentally the same school Cletus now attends. They pass each other in the hall, and aside from a glance, which Cletus meets, the narrator does not acknowledge him. After that incident, the narrator never sees Cletus again, and because he bore him no ill will the narrator regrets the incident well into his old age, when he decides to write this book as a substitution for a chance to talk to Cletus and understand all the events surrounding the murder, and above all as a "roundabout, futile way of making amends." The bulk of the novel takes place in a small town. The narrator begins by illustrating the murder of Lloyd Wilson, and then devotes the majority of two of the novel's nine chapters to exposition about himself and his family before delving back into the events surrounding the murder itself and the subsequent incident with Cletus that spawned the book. The book's thematic concerns focus on the substitution concept, and examples of substitutions about throughout the book, such as Cletus's father taking Lloyd Wilson's ear as a substitute for their friendship, or the narrator's father finding a woman to substitute for his wife who has passed away. The principle substitution is, of course, the narrator's conception of the book itself. The narrator's piecing together of the events surrounding the murder is a meandering path, somewhat patchwork in nature, and includes the point of view of several characters, even a dog. Some readers may find this a bit cumbersome to follow, but the author's use of simple, clear prose and unhurried pacing help to blend the details and ease any difficulty the reader might have in determining the narrator's purpose in the choices he makes. I found this book to be a very enjoyable read. The prose is simple, not quite Hemingway simple, but at least Norman Maclean simple. In fact, Maclean was an author that came to mind while I read, and so I highly recommend it to any fans of his work. Like Maclean, Maxwell takes one simple thematic concept and weaves it into a brilliant and elegant work of art. Though it is only 135 pages, given a chance, this book has the power to improve our consideration of the feelings of those who surround us, and that is no small accomplishment.
Rating:
Summary: The Choices We Make
Review: Hasn't everyone, at one time or another, done something that they regret later? I believe that everyone has a moment in their past, big or small that they would go back and change if they could. The main character in this novel has this problem. He has spent his whole life remembering one instant in a school hallway and wishing that he could change what he did. The narrator had been a bit of a lonely child with no real friends from day to day to hang around with. His mother died having his brother and she was never really discussed in the household after that. The narrator felt that there was a bridge between him and his brother because they never talked about their grief over their mother dying. His father remarries a woman very different from his mother, and it just seems to create a greater bridge between the narrator and his father. They just can't seem to connect with one another. But then the narrator meets Cletus, a boy about his own age, and they strike up a unique friendship. They play together everyday, and Cletus never really says much, except to stick up for the narrator to the other schoolboys. Every evening they say "So long" and "See you tomorrow" and plan to see each other the next day. But one day that changes forever. Lloyd Wilson has been killed, and Cletus's father, Clarence, is the only one anyone thinks did it. He had suspected that his wife and Lloyd Wilson were having an affair. From this point on, Cletus's life changes for good. He has to testify in court, and he must move out of his house and live with his mom in town. The narrator's friendship with Cletus has been broken. And some years later, in the school halls, the narrator believes he sees Cletus and doesn't say anything. This is what he regrets for so many years. That he did nothing. I think that the author makes dramatic choices such as the murder of Lloyd Wilson, all the exposition about the narrator and his father, and the moment in the school hallway to get specific thematic themes across to the reader. All the exposition we are given serves to show the reader the wall that sort of seems to be built between the narrator and his father. They just don't really understand one another and the narrator is not close with his brother, either. This helps the reader see how important Cletus's friendship is to him and why it disturbs him so much to lose the friendship. Also, there is a theme of substitution that runs through the novel,too. The murderer takes Lloyd Wilson's ear as a substitute for something else. The book never does come out and say what that is, so you can come to your own conclusions. Perhaps Clarence really wanted to take something else, but an ear was what he chose to represent the betrayal of a friend. Some choices we make we must live with all our lives.
Rating: 
Summary: A Good Read
Review: I found the book enjoyable not so much because the story itself was incredibly fascinating or new, but because I enjoyed the fresh way Maxwell tells the story. The narrator is an old man remembering a boy from his child, and you end up learning a great deal about both characters. Both boys have had their share of tragedy, which brings about their odd companionship. The interesting thing about So Long, See You Tommorow is how the story is told. The narrator begins telling his own story, then there is a gradual shift and you get see into the minds of the narrator's friend, that boy's family, and even a dog. I had some difficulty understanding this at first, but I quickly got used to the new style and began to really enjoy the new points of view. So Long, See You Tommorow is definitely a different sort of novel, but Maxwell is able to pull of his narration stunts, so if your ready to wrestle with it a bit, then I recommend the novel wholeheartedly.
Rating:
Summary: This novel is a microcosm of what could be.
Review: In a society that looks out for number one, simple compassion is itself a rare thing. More rare and beautiful is the compassion of William Maxwell's So Long, See You Tomorrow. In discussions I've had about this book, I found some people baffled by the emotional intensity of its main character/narrator. This fact alone is evidence to me that in a dog eat dog world we are unconsciously crying out for compassion like that evoked in Maxwell's novel. I have never seen a novel structured quite like So Long, See You Tomorrow. What may seem at first like two stories or like a story within a story is actually the delicate and brief interlacing of two lives. Even the structure is communicative of the kind of touch that the human spirit longs for. It is because of the world we live in which believes there is the "self" and there is the "other" and that the two are in opposition, that the reader might be inclined to misunderstand this as two separate stories. But in Maxwell's world, people must become intricately entwined with one another. Failing to do so is a haunting thing. This novel lives in its details and its voices. Its melancholy sincerity invites the reader in, quietly drawing attention to the importance of the smallest moments. In a single sentence about the days before Freudian significance was commonly acknowledged, Maxwell gives his readers a lens through which to view this novel. But he does not mean that the reader should assign erotic connotation. He simply invites the reader to let this story stand for something larger. The moments continue. The narrator in this novel lives in a world that keeps returning to a moment that he regrets, a moment when one boy passed another boy that he used to know in the hallway of a school, and said nothing. The poignance of his life and his imaginings ever after may strike some readers as out of proportion. Does he really deserve to return to this moment with guilt for the rest of his life? Was a moment lost, really such a crime? It is indicative of the compassion, the interpersonal depth and sincerity of this character that he still feels the weight of that missed chance years later. Just as his imaginings in the body of the novel stand in for what he feels he should have done, this novel itself stands in for something lacking in a larger world. Maxwell speaks in many voices in this novel. He gives sentience, emotion, and audience to living beings that are often tossed aside. He gives the lie to the figure of speech I used earlier in describing the society we live in when he daringly enters the thoughts of a dog and gives it simple loyalty and love with heartbreaking power. Parts of this novel are dreamlike, parts eye-opening, but the whole is insightful. This novel sees into the human spirit and shows what is there and what could be. It shows the gray area where passion and love become separate and then become one again and passion and pain become one and inseparable. It does not ask more of the world than it gives to its own characters: a compassionate handling. Thoughtful, beautiful, sorrowful, and yet showing mankind's potential, So Long, See You Tomorrow will reward you. Take the time to be touched and challenged by this novel.
Rating:
Summary: Hidden Treasure
Review: In my opinion, So Long, See You Tomorrow is an excellent book. I was assigned to read it for English, and to be honest, when I first began to read it I wasn't impressed. However, I was soon completely swept into the book - I couldn't put it down for the last few chapters. It chronicles a murder that occured in a small town. The narrator was good friends with the son of the accused murderer. Not only does this story have a fascinating account of a murder, it's has strong coming of age themes as well as lessons about friendships and forgiveness. It's also incredibly well written. Maxwell uses a very direct writing style; you get all the info in very succinct sentences. He also uses several different points of view to keep things interested. If you read this book, keep with it! You might get lost in the first few chapters, or classify it as boring, but if you just pay attention and keep reading you'll find a wonderful treasure of a book.
Rating:
Summary: The Only 5-Star Book I Have Read This Year
Review: In reading William Maxwell's So Long, See You Tomorrow, I realized a few things. First of all, in my limited experience, I have yet to see a book which fulfills both its role as a novel as well as a vehicle for some conveyance by the author better than this one. Second, I realized that my review of this novel will be glowing and perhaps superfluously positive. Take this only as an extremely strong recommendation to read this book and not as an indication that I am a little crazy. The novel is an apology from the narrator to a boy from his childhood. The two were friends in the early 20th century Midwest, only to have this friendship shattered by the murder of one boy's father. The story of what happens to the boys after this event, and the feelings that the narrator must carry with him, are the basis for his need to apologize to his childhood friend, as well as the basis for a superbly written novel. William Maxwell uses narrative effortlessly. His flashbacks, flash forwards, and imaginations blend so seamlessly into the rest of the story that the reader is able to weave them into the plot with no difficulty. He wastes no words, and spends little time on description. Now I have heard people rave about novels because the author describes rural Montana so well, of gives such an accurate description of the ocean, but let me tell you that a novel like Maxwell's awards itself a much higher place in my literary hall of fame for not needing such description, which is often beautiful but seldom integral to the plot or theme. Instead he uses his words to describe the actions of the characters in the story, which in turn reveals much about them, which illuminates the different themes of the novel excellently. Maxwell uses his novel to a degree that most writers don't. That is to say that it was written almost entirely for one person. As I said, I have a relatively small catalogue from which to reference, but it seems to be the most specifically intended novel that I have seen. Some may view this as a negative, but it my mind, it draws the reader along the narrative, if for no other reason than to see how the narrator will form the finale of his apology. You want to see how he leaves it with this person who he admittedly knows will probably never see the novel. It is not my place to say how this takes place, but I will say that, in a novel of only about 130 pages, William Maxwell has ample room to fulfill his purpose, as well as the novel's literary purpose. I feel this is a great testament to the author, and his writing. I have always been of the school that if Moby Dick could be written in ten pages, it should be. Extraneous material in a novel, no matter how beautifully written, does little more than offer the reader that which he does not need. Maxwell's book avoids this, and in the process becomes one of the finest novels I have ever read.
Rating:
Summary: A nice little gem for the patient reader
Review: In this short book, the narrator reconstructs a tragedy from his childhood, and the events that lead up to it, 50 years after it happened. It is a masterful reflection on the hazy and unreliable filter of memory.
The book's pace is often slow, and I sometimes found myself confused about which character the story was discussing. Nevertheless, it is beautifully written. Some of the passages are truly amazing. The story itself builds gradually, but by the time it is over, the effect is heartbreaking. It is a sad tale with no winners. But for the patient and thoughtful reader, it offers the kind of wisdom that only a master writer in his autumn years can offer.
Rating:
Summary: Heart-Breaking
Review: Maxwell has always been known as a very pure writer - honest sentiments in concrete images. Take this line from 'So Long, See You Tomorrow' about children sleeping in a quiet winter night as an example: 'sleeping the sleep of stone'.
Same for the book on the whole: a straight-forward and concise record of a painful childhood + a convincing and sympathetic account of what could have happened in the tragic murder/suicide that took place in the book. In the pages depicting Maxwell's childhood, you see images of the child agonizing over the death of his mother, the loss of a normal childhood, the bitterness against his father and a mixture of all these unresolved feelings which the grown up narrator narrates with great immediacy. The pictures are particularly heart-breaking as the writing is very subdued - everything is described for what it is and the author, while expressing his feelings directly, simply state what he feels without exaggeration. It is the kind of autobiographical writing that makes you understand why one writes autobiography and why all of us grieve over certain things that we think we've let go, or constantly hope we'll let go: some things will always be there, down deep, once they happen.
The fictional account of the murder/tragedy echoes Maxwell's story: how everyone has a heart and a right to their feelings; how we all get trapped in situations we cant control and break someone's heart or gets heart-broken. In a way, writing this story seems to be a way of coming to terms with things for Maxwell- to get over the bitterness against things gone wrong by understanding the complexities and inevitability of some situations. One striking thing about this piece of writing is that it's highly dialogic: like in the universe in Anna Karenina, everyone in this fictional world has a right to be understood. There's a reason why someone becomes the person s/he's become and why s/he's done what s/he's done. Even the most unsympathetic story (on the surface) has his story that may be sadder than everyone else's.
In the end it's an extremely well-written work - a very good example for students of creative writing in particular. The last thing I'll say about this book is its title. A line from the dialogue in the book itself, it symbolizes that line between childhood and adolescence/adulthood (when one's forced to drastically grow up in an extreme circumstance). One crosses this line and enters the world of traumatic loss, in which we have no choice but to accept and endure pain. As wound souls we forever look back at that other carefree world with nostaglia - a brilliant title and immensely geniune emotions.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent, well-crafted story
Review: So Long, See You Tomorrow by William Maxwell is an exceptional book. It is a beautifully told little story full of evocative descriptions with a memorable narrator. It was a pleasure to read.
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