"So Long, See You Tomorrow" by William Maxwell

This is a beautiful little book, a novella really, that is both subtle and intense. The unnamed narrator, an old man, relates memories from a brief period of his childhood. The writing is evocative and utterly real-seeming, surely because the story is partly based on the author's life (e.g. the narrator's mother dies of the flu in 1918; William Maxwell's mother died of the flu in 1918) which blurs the line between fact and fiction and made it impossible for me to see where the divide occurred. The story deeply but quietly explores the themes of guilt, divorce, trauma and grief. 

Most of the plot occurs at a remove from the narrator; he is an observer rather than an active participant. He tells the story of his classmate, Cletus Smith, and the love affair between Smith's mother and the farmer next door that causes the fracture of both families and the death of the farmer. The narrator puts his memory of what he was aware of as a child together with newspaper accounts and realizations that occur to him as an adult, and fills in the gaps with speculation. 

This is one of those books that doesn't spell everything out clearly--it requires some reading between the lines, which I appreciate because I feel it is a sign that the author has respect for the intelligence of his readers. I enjoy the challenge of reading books like this. However, I also find it mildly frustrating, especially if I am uncertain as to whether I am interpreting everything the right way. My solution in this case? After finishing this book, I literally immediately reread it to try to parse out more of its secrets. (This didn't take long, at 135 pages.) It's a sure sign of the quality of this book that I didn't find the re-read boring, and I do feel like it solidified my confidence in my interpretation. For instance, in my first read-through I thought I detected hints that the murder was committed by someone other than the character everyone suspected; my second read helped me determine that wasn't the case.

I just have two question remaining. First, on page 5 of my copy, the narrator says, "one of the crimes mentioned in that book took place in a house on Tenth Street, one street over from the house we lived in when I was a child." I tried to make this crime out to be something that is described in further detail later in the story, but I think I have come to the conclusion that it's merely tangential and is never mentioned again. Second, the ear (also mentioned on page 5) . . . I don't understand why this was done (or where it ended up). After reading the book twice, I'm pretty sure it's up to me to decide the answers to the ear question.