I think it might have been because I read it right after They Came Like Swallows and they have so many similarities. Overall, though, this novel left me a little cold. In fact, there was one excerpt I liked so much that I read it out loud to my mom and then copied it down into one of my many notebooks. I found the theme of memory in this novel fascinating and like They Came Like Swallows, it was beautifully written. I felt it took away from the potency of the situations that were being portrayed since most of them were pretty much being made up by the protagonist. I also wasn’t sure how I felt about so many of the scenes having been improvised by the main character because he couldn’t possibly have been there to witness them. The only character I was really invested in was Cletus’ dog, Trixie. I didn’t like this book as much as They Came Like Swallows, partially because I didn’t care about the characters in So Long, See You Tomorrow that much. they hardly have any scenes together at all, and I think if there had been more of a sense of camaraderie and companionship between them, the book would have had more emotional heft. I think the main character and Cletus’ friendship should have been developed more. I kind of wish that the main character was Bunny, that would have been interesting.
It turns out that a lot of William Maxwell’s writing is semi-autobiographical and he used certain themes and family relationships repeatedly.
There were such strong similarities between the main character in this novel’s family situation and that of Bunny Morrison in They Came Like Swallows (the first book I read by William Maxwell) that at first I thought that So Long, See You Tomorrow was a sequel to They Came Like Swallows and the unnamed character was an older Bunny. The murderer’s son, Cletus, is ignored by the protagonist after Cletus’ father’s actions rock the community and the narrator, now an old man, tries to make sense of the events leading up to the murder. The unnamed narrator of So Long, See You Tomorrow looks back on his youth and the misfortunes that befell a childhood friend when his father murdered another man and then committed suicide.
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