The Long Tomorrow

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The Long Tomorrow reminds me of the excellent The Wild Shore, Kim Stanley Robinson’s debut. Both a coming of age story about a boy, both set in a rural America decades after nuclear annihilation, with knowledge of the past not forgotten but not completely understood either. And like Robinson’s, Brackett’s characters ponder questions about which life is better: tech city life with its destructive dangers, or primitive small town farming? Like Robinson, Brackett doesn’t give answers. Instead she focuses on the desire of some humans for knowledge and change, and the fear of it in others.

The characters ostensibly dualistic archetypes on these matters, Brackett manages to turn things on their heads, and keeps the reader engaged with main characters that transcend the binary. There are other themes too: family, educating children, religion as a product and a source of societal change, the brazen arrogance and naivety of youth, and the non-existence of free will.

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