Tomorrow

By Graham Swift

From Graham Swift, Booker Prize-winning author of Last Orders, comes a masterful and compassionate novel of rare emotional power and narrative skill.

On a midsummer’s night, Paula lies awake beside her sleeping husband. She and Mike have been married for twenty-five years, a good marriage; they have two teenage children, Nick and Kate, peacefully sleeping in their own nearby rooms. But Paula’s eyes won’t close: the next morning she and Mike have to tell the children something that will redefine all their lives.

Recalling the years before and after her children were born, Paula begins a story that is both a glowing celebration of love possessed and a moving acknowledgement of the fear of loss, of the fragilities, illusions and secrets on which even our most intimate sense of who we are can rest. As day draws nearer, Paula’s intensely personal thoughts seem to touch on all our tomorrows.

Brilliantly distilling half a century into one suspenseful night, as tender in its tone as it is deep in its resonance, Tomorrow is a magical exploration of coupledom, parenthood and individuality, and a unique meditation on the mysteries of happiness and belonging.


It’s a week past your sixteenth birthday. By a fluke that’s become something of an embarrassment and that some people will say wasn’t a fluke at all, you were born in Gemini. I’m not an especially superstitious woman. I married a scientist. But one little thing I’ll do tomorrow–today, I mean, but for a little while still I can keep up the illusion–is cross my fingers.

Everything’s quiet, the house is still. Mike and I have anticipated this moment, we’ve talked about it and rehearsed it in our heads so many times that recently it’s sometimes seemed like a relief: it’s actually come. On the other hand, it’s monstrous, it’s outrageous–and it’s in our power to postpone it. But ‘after their sixteenth birthday’, we said, and let’s be strict about it. Perhaps you may even appreciate our discipline and tact. Let’s be strict, but let’s not be cruel. Give them a week. Let them have their birthday, their last birthday of that old life.

You’re sleeping the deep sleep of teenagers. I just about remember it. I wonder how you’ll sleep tomorrow.
—from Tomorrow

• Language: English
• Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
• Release date: Nov 5, 2010
• ISBN: 9780307366443

Graham Swift

Graham Swift was born in 1949 and is the author of eleven novels, two collections of short stories, including the highly acclaimed England and Other Stories, and of Making an Elephant, a book of essays, portraits, poetry and reflections on his life in writing. His most recent novel, Mothering Sunday, became an international bestseller and won The Hawthornden Prize for best work of imaginative literature. With Waterland he won the Guardian Fiction Prize, and with Last Orders the Booker Prize. Both novels were made into films. His work has appeared in over thirty languages.

Reviews for Tomorrow

[seeword · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

The Goodreads reviews seem to be "loved it or hated it" with a lot of readers viewing it as an actual letter by a mother to her children, rather than as the reflections of a woman during a sleepless night. She reviews her life, her marriage, her children, her parents, her in-laws, a cat, all her relationships. Once again I am amazed at how much Graham Swift can pack into a short space (in this case 255 pages). At the end, we are left to ponder about what happens "tomorrow" when she and her husband reveal what she considers a major family secret to their son and daughter (sixteen year old twins).Whether or not one loves or hates this book may depend a great deal on the reader's perspective. I liked (not loved) this book, but not as much as the other two I've read by this author (Mothering Sunday and England and Other Stories). I'll read more by Swift, Waterland is on my chair-side stack. Library book.

[pdebolt_1 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

I thought this book had a promising premise; however, it soon became repetitive and tedious. Paula Hook, the narrator, spends one entire night, with her husband asleep beside her, recounting the family past leading up to the "big reveal" to their teen-aged children that will occur in the morning. There are so many ways this novel went wrong - it is well written, but lacks the necessary ingredients to make it even marginally interesting. I can't imagine how yucky it would be to learn the extensive details of their parents' sex life and how ultimately boring to recount their genealogy over and over again. The secret to be revealed is almost a ho-hum after the anticipation of what will be learned by the twins.

[lynnb_64 · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

This book just didn't work for me. The story is basically a monologue where the mother of twins lies awake one night, knowing that in the morning, she and her husband will reveal a family secret to their 16 year old twins. SPOILER ALERT....My problem with the story is that, if the mother was that conflicted about artificial insemination, she wouldn't have gone through with it. Her views on "real" parenthood are so far removed from the route she chose, it's difficult to understand why she did it in the first place. There was just too big a disconnect between the thoughts and actions of the narrator to make the story believable in any way.

[amcgregor_24 · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

Very disappointing. I am a big Graham Swift fan but I hated this book. I found the narrator irritating, self-satisfied and self indulgent.

[bobbieharv · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Well-written, but ultimately a long drawn-out portentous pondering by a woman about what turns out not to be a very big deal - telling their children the truth about their father.

[lunarreader · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

OK, who did know that Graham Swift is a woman? I didn't. By the look of his picture he sure looks a man. But he must be a woman. Must. How can one explain otherwise the book Tomorrow? This book is one long stream of consciousness by a woman on the night before a crucial day in the life of her family: her life, but surely the life or her man and her children. How is it possible that these typical female thoughts (at least, they look typical female to me, but then again, i'm also a man) can be written down in this way by a man? But it is a great book. Of course one could easily imagine another end. One could easily imagine another situation, but the description, the way the story unfolds, the small things.... It's Graham Swift and yes, it is a masterpiece. Only one character but references to many others, like Otis the cat, and yet it tells about all major themes and questions of life: childhood, parenthood, trust, lies, responsibility, care, biology, nature and nurture.A brilliant point of view taken by Swift here and even more brilliant in the complete setup.Read this book. Surely if you are a woman, and then tell me if you agree.Thanks.

[florenceart · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I'm afraid I found it difficult to feel empathy for the narrator, whose problems seem to me to be blown quite out of proportion. I was also annoyed by her wandering and repetitive style and the way she kept hinting that she will make some mind-blowing revelations later on, and sometimes felt like shaking her by the shoulders and scream at her to get to the point! The book is well-written, but not enough to bring interest to a rather ordinary and unexciting story.

[georg0miggel · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

I bought this book because I really liked "Last Orders" by the same author. But after reading this one I felt cheated. I can enjoy books without suspense or a surprising ending. But I feel treated badly by the author if he/she announces a surprise and you wait for it fruitlessly. I know this may be considered as a spoiler, but - believe me - there is nothing to spoil.

[eglinton_1 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

Sometime children aren't quite ready for the freighted unburdening of their prehistory that their parents may try to inflict on them. Whoa, too much detail there, mum. And sometimes the reader doesn't quite settle in to the voice and subject an author sets out. And so here; Swift's monologue is well-turned and clearly going somewhere of some interest, but I didn't connect and so put it aside unfinished. Family saga, big reveal, 50s through 80s state of play, not sure what more...

[edwinbcn · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

The novels of Graham Swift often hinge on an infinitismal moment in time, that defines the transition between one state of being and another state of being. The author picks the exact turning point moment between two episodes in a person's life.The success of his novels depend on the degree of and his ability to maintain suspense, and goad the reader to accept further delay, as the novel builds up and describes all that goes on before the pivotal moment. In some of Graham Swift's works this tension is maintained better than in other novels. In Tomorrow, the story line development is reasonably strong, but the nature of the momentuous change can be predicted from very early in the novel, which weakens the suspense.Technically, therefore, Tomorrow is perhaps ver well done, but ultimately, the novel is not very interesting.

[thorold_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

A mother spends a sleepless night reflecting on the big family secret that is going to be revealed to the kids the next day. Very nicely done, as you would expect from Swift, but ultimately it doesn't seem to amount to all that much.

[stonelaura · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

It is a credit it Graham Swift’s writing style that I, mostly, made it through this story at all. During the span of one evening the narrator, Paula Hook, reveals, in painstaking and inappropriate detail, the story of her and her husband Mike’s meeting, their family histories, her one night infidelity, and their infertility problems. You will already know as soon as you begin reading (or listening) that this infertility problem is somehow resolved because Paula’s entire dialog is really a preparation for the talk she and Mike will be having the next day with their now sixteen year-old twins. The denouement, that it is not the virile veterinarian that was so comforting to their lost and recovered cat, Otis, as well as to Paula, but an anonymous in vitro process is a letdown that is only slightly less off-putting because it has been preceded by so many intimate details that no child, in vitro or not, would care to know about their parents.