Sublime

I was initially resistant to William Maxwell reading his own book. It seemed narcissistic to me. Then 40 minutes in, I was so hooked. This is a gorgeous telling of an intimate story. I love this book and his narrating broke my heart wide open. Get.

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A Jewel

So Long, See You Tomorrow is always on my list of "books you would want if you were stranded on a desert island." Mr. Maxwell tells a story like no one else I know, with language so clean, almost spare, and yet so perfectly evocative.

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wonderful

the part of the story which was from the dogs perspective tore at my heart. an amazing skillful writer.

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A Most Vehement Flame

"jealousy is cruel as the grave:
the coals thereof are coals of fire,
which hath a most vehement flame"
Solomon 8:6, King James Bible


This short novel about a 1921 murder-suicide in a small Illinois farming town mesmerized me. Written as the recollection of the narrator's friendship with another 14-year-old and his reconstruction of events from newspaper accounts fifty years on after he cannot shake a lingering memory of the last time he saw his friend, whose father killed his mother's lover and then himself.

The book is a timeless depiction of the human condition marred by matters of the heart, steeped in imagery of the moors of marital moral dilemmas as neighbors fall in love, she an abused and unhappy mom and he who married young and longs for love, as the author meticulously imagines how the marital betrayals metastasize into a cuckolded husband's mania, the isolation of their son (his friend), the estrangement of her married lover's children, and even the broken heart of the boy's/family's dog. What particularly haunts the narrator though is an event magnified in his mind in a later brief encounter with the friend, after which the friend disappeared from his life.

A raw, jarring novel I highly recommend.

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just don't get this one

Lincoln,IL. People live and die, marry, work, have children and much more. Question: Is, Cletus, one of the primary characters, a ghost? He's the only one who's not in the yearbook. Also, the author is not a good reader.

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Heartbreaking. Sad. Too human.

The details in the storytelling are engaging and heartbreaking. So grateful to find this book with the interview when he was 87. Great interview too.

No word or scene wasted

A concise, detailed study of someone else's personal tragedy. A great one-shot listen for a long car ride or when painting a foyer.

Deeply moving

This is a story that slowly enveloped my heart. It is a gorgeously simple story told in a languid pace that feels appropriate to the geography of a small town in Nebraska. Maxwell's regret (he acknowledges it as guilt) is moving but not overpowering, and parallels the remorse that some of the characters experience in this story of selfish and selfless love. I enjoyed the introductory interview with the author, as well. I HIGHLYA recommend this memoir/novel.

Such a beautiful look of the human soul.

So Long, See You Tomorrow by William Maxwell, which he expresses his prose so honestly as well as elegantly.

Not my cup of tea.

more of a memoir than a novel, from what I can tell. just about put me to sleep with its meandering pace. The incident with the murder doesn't seem to really be relevant to anything else being described in the first half of the book and the rest of the descriptions of rural life were not very captivating, despite the writer/narrator doing a good job on the recording side.