He almost makes the events feel inevitable, destined, unstoppable-but of course they are not. What I noticed most about this novel was Maxwell’s ability to tell such a tale without placing blame. Two families destroyed, children hurt and bewildered.not even the family dog escapes the pain. Now we are inside the minds of those involved and now we see the collateral damage from ground level. But Maxwell’s focus changes from overview to detail about halfway in, and that is the point at which this novel takes on a different feeling entirely. I did not like the way the story was being told from such a distance and by a narrator who had little first hand knowledge. In the beginning, I found the book less than gripping. We are told this story by a very uninterested party, a man who was a boy at the time and who remembers the events so well because of a simple omission of his own that he finds difficult to put behind him. We are quickly told why he was murdered and who murdered him. There is little or no mystery about the murder.

I found Trixie’s story particularly heart breaking – resulting in some spontaneous hugs and kisses to my own dogs during and after reading. What else is one to expect from the editor of some of my favorite author’s (John O’Hara, John Cheever, etc.).

Maxwell exhibits masterful writing throughout the book. It’s a disconsolate exercise, with nothing but the your own conscience and the people as you imagine them at the time standing for judgment. How often does one contemplate their own childhood acts and understandings that could have contributed to, if not making things worse, at least not making things better. It’s a rethinking, a piecing together of instances that led to a tragic event that cast to the winds the members of two families and those who knew them. A novella of sorts, the story takes us back to the writer’s childhood growing up in Lincoln, Nebraska in the early 1920s. William Maxwell’s So Long, See You Tomorrow was a melancholic treat. The rich man usually forces his way through the eye of the needle, and there is little or no point in putting your faith in Divine Providence…” The gentel and the trusting are trampled on. “People neither get what they deserve no deserve what they get.

So long see you tomorrow