Who Do We Love

I think friends and family get short shrift when we talk about love.  

This Time Tomorrow , the latest in a string of bestsellers from Emma Straub, is a different kind of love story.

Alice Stern has two great loves, her ailing dad Leonard, the author of a classic time-travel novel that launched a much-loved television series, and her best-friend-since-childhood, Sam.

As a single dad, Leonard raised Alice in a tiny Tudor-style house on Pomander Walk on New York’s Upper West Side. (Although it sounds like a fairytale setting, Pomander Walk is a real place.)

Alice works in admissions at the private school where she and Sam were once students. It isn’t the art career she dreamed of, but she’s been satisfied enough to stay for years. She’s equally content-complacent about her longtime boyfriend Matt.

On the eve of her 40th birthday, Alice faces a juncture. She’s heartbroken about Leonard, who is unresponsive in the hospital. When her beloved boss retires, she’s passed over for a promotion she wasn’t sure she even wanted. Matt proposes and she turns him down, ending their good-enough relationship. Sam needs to hurry back to her kids in New Jersey after dinner, forcing Alice to wonder if she’s being left behind by friends with spouses, children, and ambitious careers.

In a fit of nostalgia, she heads to an old haunt for one last drink.

Like the characters in her dad’s bestseller, Alice wakes up in an earlier time. It’s 1996 and she’s in their house on Pomander Walk on the eve of her sixteenth birthday, with opportunities to do things differently and see how alternative choices pan out.

Without giving too much away, I loved Alice hunting down her dad at a fan fiction convention, as Leonard’s quirky writer friends debate time travel. It warmed my heart when Alice, finding herself in an alternative version of the present-day, immediately checks her phone to see if she and Sam are friends.

Emma Straub is the daughter of author Peter Straub, who died in October. According to NPR, This Time Tomorrow was inspired by his half-joking suggestion that she write about a woman visiting her father in the hospital. This book is a wonderful tribute to him.  

 

 Betsy Gomberg reads (and sometimes writes about) Jewish books. She is Spertus Institute’s Director of Marketing & Communications.