This Time Tomorrow

Author Emma Straub
Narrator Marin Ireland
Publisher Penguin Books Ltd
Publish Date 9 June 2022
Run Time 8 hours and 32 minutes
Format Audio
Genre Contemporary lifestyle fiction, Family life fiction, Humorous fiction, Modern and contemporary fiction, Narrative theme: Love and relationships.

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What to expect

Brought to you by Penguin.

A fiendishly clever, nostalgic, and tender novel about adolescence and middle age, expectation and anticipation, and how we must cherish what we have while there is still time . . .

If you could go back, would you do things differently?

Alice Stern isn't ready to turn forty. She thought she'd have more time to figure it all out. Above all, she thought she'd have more time with her father, Leonard Stern, an eccentric novelist - but he's lying in a hospital bed and Alice isn't sure if she'll hear his voice again.

When she falls asleep outside their old apartment on the night before her birthday, she's surprised to be greeted the next morning by a much younger Leonard, with a sixteenth birthday card for a teenage Alice who, far from clinging to her youth, is hurtling towards adulthood . . .

Alice soon discovers how she got back here, to 1996 and her sixteenth birthday, and realises she can keep on coming, whenever she chooses. But faced each time with different versions of her life, and the consequences of her decisions, it's on her not to lose sight of what she wants most: some time back with Leonard . . .

With her celebrated humour, insight, and heart, Emma Straub cleverly turns all the traditional time travel tropes on their head and delivers a different kind of love story - about the lifelong, reverberating relationship between a parent and child.

'I just finished This Time Tomorrow and I'm crying at its message and its honestly and its utter beauty. And now I have to go call my mom' Jodi Picoult
'A gorgeous and witty storyteller' Liane Moriarty
'A master of the domestic ensemble drama' Time

© Emma Straub 2022 (P) Penguin Audio 2022

Critics Review

Straub has made a mastery of witty, warm novels that spin modern tales with literary flair. Her fourth might be her best. A clever, nostalgic, romantic tale. Part-Russian Doll, part-David Nicholls, it has the makings of a dreamy, witty, contemporary classic

Evening Standard

Poignant

New York Times

Her most emotionally resonant work yet … a complex tale that doesn’t feel the slightest bit complicated

Vogue

An excellent time-travelling novel about adolescence and second chances from the always brilliant Emma Straub

Metro

A tender tale of time travel. Straub strips back the layers to reveal what’s important. It makes you want to stop what you’re doing and call your loved ones immediately

Stylist, 'Book of the Week'

I just finished This Time Tomorrow and I’m crying at its message and its honestly and its utter beauty. And now I have to go call my mom

Jodi Picoult

Shines with humour and warmth

Washington Post

One of the most moving and intelligent time travel novels I have ever read. Nostalgic, wise, funny, and filled with love

Gabrielle Zevin, author of Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow

This Time Tomorrow is a beautifully made, elegant music box of a novel that sets in motion its clever clockwork of delight-then breaks your heart with its bittersweet, lingering song

Michael Chabon

Deliciously warm and nostalgic

Gillian McAllister, bestselling author of Wrong Place Wrong Time

If I could time travel, I’d go back just far enough to start Emma Straub’s beautiful novel This Time Tomorrow again for the first time. The pages brim with tenderness and an appreciation for what we had and who we were. I could not have loved it more

Ann Patchett

A tender, witty David Nicholls-esque tale of familial love

This autobiographical novel is delightfully nostalgic but the beauty of it rests in its tenderness and wisdom – a reminder of what’s important and what we should cherish in life

Culturefly

A witty, warm novel about love and letting go, This Time Tomorrow is a rare gem. Emma Straub is such an elegant storyteller – I couldn’t put it down

Phoebe Luckhurst, author of The Lock In

Emma Straub’s This Time Tomorrow is that rare one-in-a-million novel that not only pulls you wholly into itself, but leaves a lasting mark when it finally releases you. Never has Straub’s writing been more incisive, clever, and emotionally generous-which is really saying something. The kind of book that will make you laugh, make you cry, and make you call the people you love. Exceptional

Emily Henry, author of You, Me on Vacation

Can’t recommend this deeply moving and pleasurable book more

Taffy Brodesser-Akner, bestselling author of Fleischman is in Trouble

This time-travelling take on a hypothetical return to 1996 and the protagonist’s 16th birthday will be enough to remind you to cherish what you have

ELLE

Time travel is a popular trope in fiction, and Straub deploys it brilliantly in her effervescent new novel. …. Straub is an expert chronicler of social mores and the inner lives of her (mostly) bourgeois characters, and here she delivers a surefire bestseller

Oprah Daily

A teasing time-slip novel, imbued with all Straub’s trademark humour and humanity

Saga Magazine

The always delightful, deeply beloved Emma Straub returns with a novel that seems like her take on 13-going-on-30…. It’s Straub, so you know it’s going to be funny, touching, and filled with family drama

Glamour

A wonderful book . . . about how we need to cherish those we have lost

Hello!

Magical, heart-warming and insightful . . . Warm, wryly funny and melancholic, This Time Tomorrow asks the big questions of life while revelling in 90s nostalgia and the allure of New York City in the fall

Daily Express

Full of deftly managed plot twists, it’s both fun and poignant

Mail on Sunday

A heartfelt father-daughter story that breathes fresh life into the concept of time travel

Living North

Not every book teaches you something, but Emma Straub’s insightful novel does. Witty observations and beautiful writing

Woman & Home

Delightfully nostalgic but the beauty of it rests in its tenderness and wisdom – a reminder of what’s important and what we should cherish in life

Culturefly

With her celebrated humour, insight, and heart, beloved New York Times bestseller Emma Straub offers her own twist on traditional time travel tropes, and a different kind of love story

Biblio

This New York-set story about time travel will break your heart

Red

This grown-up take on Freaky Friday balances humour and poignancy so well

Good Housekeeping

Enlivened by Straub’s typically acerbic prose and quirky characters, not to mention a good dose of 90s nostalgia

Jewish Chronicle, 'Fiction of the Year'

A wonderfully bittersweet story willed with humour, compassion and poignancy

Candis

Has a lot of heart, some satisfying plot twists and a bittersweet, open ended finale

BookPage Starred Review

Clever, complex and really rather lovely

Best

Alice is a joy of a character . . . Straub brings the bittersweet passing of youth to adulthood to life in vivid detail, with a story steeped in 1990s nostalgia. It’s a book to devour

Jewish Chronicle

Emotionally resonant. Captivating

Sunday Post

Delightful

Boston Globe

Heartfelt

SFX

Praise for Emma Straub

‘A gorgeous and witty storyteller’

Funny, poignant and beautifully observed

Straub writes beautifully and amusingly . . . hard to beat for sheer charm and gentle wit

Daily Mail

Smart and entertaining

Stylist

Hugely talented . . . intelligent holiday reading

Warm and big-hearted . . . leaves you smiling for days

Straub writes with such verve and sympathetic understanding of her characters . . . Reading this novel has all the pleasures of reading one of Anne Tyler’s compelling family portraits

New York Times

It’s the beautifully drawn, vibrant characters that make this smart, compelling novel so irresistible

A funny and insightful look at love and relationships

Good Housekeeping

A smart, cool sensibility

Elle

Lovely, satisfying

EW.com

Smart and fresh, offering new insights into the lives of people all around us

Brooklyn Magazine

Thoughtful and hilarious

Real Simple

It would be easy to compare Straub to other masters of the genre like Meg Wolitzer or Jennifer Egan, but she’s already a master in her own right

The Millions

Emma Straub is such a funny and brilliant writer and this time-travelling tale is a charming exploration of what it would be like to find yourself younger and surrounded by the people you love when they’re still at the height of their power

Stylist

Wise and often hilarious

Buzzfeed

Readers will devour this witty and warmly satisfying novel

Publishers Weekly

A precise and observant writer whose supple prose carries the story along without a snag. Straub’s characters are a quirky and interesting bunch . . . it’s a pleasure spending time with them

Starred Review, Kirkus

Devilishly observed

Starred Review, Booklist

Sprinkled with humour and insight

Starred Review, Library Journal

Straub is consistently excellent

Book Riot

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