This Time Tomorrow
By Emma Straub
Michael Joseph, £16.99


Emma Straub’s latest novel is a love story. Yet it’s no traditional romance, rather a tribute to the complicated relationship between a parent and a child and loosely inspired by her own family dynamic.

Straub is the daughter of supernatural writer and Stephen King collaborator Peter Straub; herfictional patriarch is Leonard Stern, a one-hit wonder sci fi novelist whose creations have led a rather more exciting existence than he has.

And her heroine is Alice, a struggling artist (rather less successful than the best selling Straub) who on the cusp of her 40th birthday is in the throes of an existential crisis as she contemplates a life marred by lost loves, a stalled career and a father facing his own imminent mortality.

By Emma Straub

Emma Straub

So far, so Straub, who excels at witty, wordy comedies involving multiple generations of dysfunctional families negotiating modern middle-class life (often New Yorkers of Jewish origin).

But then the story takes a fantastical swerve, as Alice finds herself whisked back to the morning of her 16th birthday and realises that by making small changes on that day, her future doesn’t have to be set in stone.


In fact, she soon finds out that she can keep going back to her younger self, experimenting with different actions that come with very different consequences.
Alice is a joy of a character — flawed and slightly stunted, but not broken; quirky, but not a manic pixie dream girl.

As she navigates a situation that owes more than a faint debt to Groundhog Day, learning more about herself with every journey, her experiences make for compelling reading.

And her relationship with Leonard, as it starts to unfold, is beautifully portrayed.

The time travel element is a tad clunky — a butterfly effect is triggered, but it only seems to affect Alice and Leonard —but that’s immaterial. What this book is really about is the gulf between our teenage and adult selves, and the way attitudes to our parents’ personal lives shift as we gain the perspective of years.

Straub brings the bittersweet passing of youth to adulthood to life in vivid detail, with a story steeped in 1990s nostalgia; all mixtapes, stolen cigarettes and social plans arranged on landlines.

The ending, when it comes, is inevitable but poignant nonetheless.

I hesitate to call this a beach read, because it’s smarter than your average, and far from a cheap thriller. But it’s a book to devour when you’ve got the time to do so; today, tomorrow or the next day.