I love time travel stories.
I love Emma Straub.
This Time Tomorrow was a highly anticipated read for me.
On the morning of her 40th birthday Alice wakes up in her childhood bedroom, the year is 1996 and she’s sixteen-years-old. Alice is thrust back to a world of SAT prep classes, high school angst, and teen boys she has idealized over the decades through a haze of nostalgia.
She’s also back in a time where her beloved father isn’t nearing the end of his life, but healthy, young, and very much alive. Alice wonders if she does things differently this time around whether she might be living a very different life than she does now. It’s delightfully reminiscent of Peggy Sue Got Married, in fact that movie is mentioned along with some other time travel favorites.
Time travel stories trod a fine line between value added and distracting. Sometimes the narrative relies on the time travel aspect far too much and the story becomes bogged down or repetitive. I don’t think that happens here. In This Time Tomorrow Straub utilizes time travel to explore the concept of time and mortality, the way relationships and perspectives thereof shift and evolve, and the FOMO of paths not taken.
At its heart the story is really about a father-daughter relationship. So many stories focus on mothers and daughters, I really appreciate this slightly different angle. Emma Straub has said she drew inspiration from her own father’s (author Peter Straub) illness.
A fun, touching, delightfully affirming story with all the interpersonal insight one expects of Straub, plus a healthy dose of 90s nostalgia to boot.
That Bookish Life 