2013 book 98

Caroline Leavitt's Is This Tomorrow
Full disclosure: Caroline Leavitt once mailed me some stickers and stuff, so I kind of love her and am predisposed to like her books.
Leavitt's latest, after Pictures of You, is another EXCELLENT story, focusing on Ava--a Jewish divorcee in the 1950s--and her son Lewis, who are already neighborhood outcasts, when Lewis' best friend disappears. I will say that the earlier parts of this book bummed me out and filled me with indignant fury in equal measures, because I too am Jewish and have experienced much of the ignorance displayed in this book (luckily things are better now for American Jews, but we're really not too far removed from people being offended that you don't want to decorate your desk for Christmas). That's not really relevant to the plot, but I wanted to point out that Leavitt totally nails that time period's mildly vicious anti-Semitism and general meanness toward divorced women. It's all pretty heartbreaking. And that's before the best friend even goes missing, and Lewis and Rose (his other best friend, the sister of the missing Jimmy) have to try and keep themselves going. This isn't a mystery (though all the plotlines have a resolution), but a really moving coming-of-age, dealing with the crazy 1950s/1960s, trying to get past personal tragedies, sort of novel. Plus, there are pies. I really loved this and will probably be recommending it to a lot of my lady friends who read. A/A-.


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A review copy was provided by the publisher. This book will be released on May 7th.