51 pages • 1 hour read
Emma StraubThis Time Tomorrow
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2022A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
Father-Daughter Relationships
This Time Tomorrow is a story about the powerful relationship between fathers and daughters. Leonard and Alice, the novel’s two primary characters, are a tight-knit father-daughter unit. It is notable that Leonard became the primary parent for Alice because it was unusual in the 1980s for single fathers to gain full custody of their children. But Alice’s mother wanted a radically different life, so Alice grew up with Leonard and a smattering of phone calls from Serena.
Leonard has always been a devoted father to Alice. As a single father, with his own artistic quirks, Leonard was not a strict parent. He didn’t lecture Alice for drinking, and even smoked cigarettes with her when she was a teenager. Leonard didn’t feel the need to set rules and strict structures for Alice because she was always a responsible and good kid. Thus, Alice grew up with freedom and respect. This respect deepens the closeness of their relationship because it demonstrates that Leonard never questioned Alice’s integrity or decision-making, giving her the space to make her own mistakes and learn from her own life. Leonard is not possessive of Alice, but he’s very supportive. Alice feels his loving support prepared her well for the world because as an adult she is responsible, has a good sense of her self-worth, and feels positive about her environment.
Alice is also a devoted daughter to Leonard. Because Leonard originally didn’t remarry, they are each other’s primary companions. They’ve always had one another, but they’ve also only ever had each other. Leonard’s impending death frightens Alice because when he dies, she will be truly alone in the world. Her time-travel adventures, though they have the effect of teaching her lessons about her own life, are conducted with the primary goal of keeping him in her life for as long as possible. Though time travel ultimately proves to be the source of Leonard’s ill health, Alice’s devotion to her father is notable, and her own travels lead to positive changes in his life, giving him further artistic success and domestic companionship.
This Time Tomorrow is inspired by Straub’s relationship with her own father, author Peter Straub. Like Alice, Straub stood by her father for a long time while he died. The trauma of watching a loved one in pain and dying slowly, coupled with the grief of losing a parent, is an instrumental narrative theme in this novel. This Time Tomorrow is a celebration of the bond between father and daughter.
Life’s Endless Possibilities
One thing that differentiates humans from other sentient beings is our understanding of our own mortality. The inevitability of death and brevity of life makes existential anxiety a common feature of the human experience. Humans project this anxiety onto the makeup of their lives, wondering if the lives they are living are the best versions possible. Part of human nature is to interrogate the past for the answers to the present and future. This interrogation often comes with feelings of regret; we wonder what decisions we would have changed if given the opportunity. Many decisions from our pasts inform the rest of our lives, sometimes immutably.
Alice is in the throes of contemplating how her life has turned out. Her father’s impending death and her 40th birthday are the instigators of this reflection. Though Alice likes her life, she wonders how different decisions in her youth might have affected the trajectory of her life. She starts playing the “what if” game, in which she wonders what would have happened if she got married, dated her high school crush, or gone to a different college. When she travels back in time to age 16, she experiences adolescence again but with the hindsight of a 40-year-old adult. This hindsight allows her to realize how much of the pressures of adolescence become meaningless in the grand scheme of things. In fact, Alice’s adult perspective helps her see what truly matters: spending time with her father, enjoying her bond with Sam, and living in the moment.
Though her character remains fundamentally the same, Alice learns that tweaking one thing in the past can change the future. In her first experience traveling back to age 16, she has sex with Tommy, her childhood crush, not to change the circumstances of her life but to improve her feeling of control over it. But instead of offering her later self empowerment and autonomy, that act attaches Tommy to her for life. When Alice jumps back to age 40, she’s in an alternate reality in which she and Tommy are married with children. This consequence demonstrates to her that life is full of possibilities that can alter the course of the future. But because Alice has access to different versions of her life, she must make a decision that most people never have to: Which version of her life is the one that she should stick with? Alice learns that even though small changes in her past can lead to large changes in her future, ultimately the things about life that are truly important don’t change. In all variations of life, Leonard ends up slowly dying in the hospital.
Though life is full of endless possibilities, the novel questions if it’s worth exploring all these avenues, or if the real lesson is in accepting the road already taken.
The Importance of Moving Forward
In This Time Tomorrow, Straub explores the ways in which the past captures our imagination. Humans put so much stock in their past as indicative of their present and future. But Straub’s conclusion encourages her reader to prioritize moving forward with life instead of looking backward. Three important moments in the plot help to develop this theme.
The first is when Alice speaks to her father, still on his deathbed but aware and able to talk. He tells her that he’s ready for death. As tragic as death is, it is every individual’s fate. Leonard has lived a good life, and he has made peace with his ending. This conversation is formative because Alice is unwilling to let Leonard go until this point. Leonard understands the importance of moving forward. There is no cure for him and nothing he would have done differently in his life. Leonard’s death is a symbol of one chapter closing and another one beginning. As sad as his death is for Alice, it is necessary for both Leonard and Alice to continue on with that next chapter.
The second important moment in which Straub develops this theme is when Alice decides not to time travel anymore. She even lets go of her inheritance of the house on Pomander Walk because she doesn’t want to be tempted by the portal. With Leonard dead, Alice has to reckon with her own desire to return to a past where she can be with him again. But turning back in time is just a way of avoiding the reality of her future, and Alice realizes that it’s not healthy to keep going back to the past. In giving up her childhood home and the memories associated with it, Alice chooses to move forward with her life. The house on Pomander Walk is a symbol of her relationship with her father. Leonard’s death and Alice’s decision not to return to that symbolic setting prove that she has accepted the inevitability and unknowability of the future.
In the final chapter, Alice returns to a slightly different version of her 40-year-old life. She has a lot to look forward to: She lives in a nicer apartment, has been promoted at work, and has a potential romance with a former high school peer on the horizon. Alice makes the decision that this life is authentic and therefore fulfilling enough for her. She gazes out her window at the city she loves and is satisfied. Though she grieves the loss of her father, she decides that she must go forward with her life, ending on the line: “Forward, that was the idea. Until the future, whatever it was going to be” (307). This conclusion heightens the importance of this theme. The future is unknowable, and it should be. By moving forward and embracing that unpredictable future, Alice can live a happier, more honest life.
