Tomorrow Today Thursday - T3

Are you feeling thoughtful?

I'm taking part in the inaugural link-up of Thoughtful Third Thursday (T3), hosted by My Closet Catalogue and A Bibliophile's Style. It's all about books and outfits inspired by them, so please go check out some of the other participants, especially if you want some ideas for books to read. 

I'm not sure yet if I recommend my book.

 

Right now I'm reading Tomorrow by Graham Swift. Swift is a contemporary British writer, and I've only read one other book by him – Waterland, which was excellent. Tomorrow is more challenging.

The book is written in the first person by a mother of sixteen-year-old twins. She's writing to them during the night before a big change is about to happen: tomorrow their father will sit them down and tell them something that will alter their lives completely. She writes about meeting her husband, their marriage, and their lives together both before and after the twins were born. 

 

She's an art dealer, in London no less, so kind of my dream life if I'd had any ambition. I'm recreating an outfit she might wear – business-like but with a little bit of flair, dahling.

reading glasses, not my everyday glasses; suit - Marks & Spencer; top, shoes and tights - retail somewhere; belt - thrifted; scarf - JCP; pin - retail circa 1980s; Spanish silver earrings I've had since 1975

 

This is the only suit I own, and I bought it around 1999. The book is set in 1995, so the style is about right. See the sharp shoulder pads and deep-cut armholes? It's beautifully tailored and detailed, but I don't really have much occasion to wear it anymore (and I can't get the skirt zipped anyway). So for now it hangs in a garment bag, waiting for the day I have to make a good impression in front of a judge - haha!

Now, about the book – the writing jumps around A LOT, and it gets kind of irritating! The narrator starts a story and then wanders off into other details and the stories behind them – just when you're starting to follow it and feel like you're getting somewhere – and then interrupts the sentence like I've just done, but sometimes with longer phrases. Did that sentence irritate you? That's nothing. This is from the book:

“…and what with this and all the sharing of our earlier years, I may even have had a fleeting picture of the long, rhythmic waves that used to roll and spill, not onto Brighton beach, but onto the sandy crescent bay at Craiginish in Scotland, where I’d spent summers as an unsuspecting girl and where one day, yes, Kate—I certainly wouldn’t have suspected this on that night in Osborne Street—your father would propose to me, actually if not exactly formally propose to me, in the dunes.”

See what I mean?! It's kind of infuriating! I might have already given up on this book and thrown it across the room except my curiosity won't allow me to. I must find out what the hell the big secret is! I think it's going to be something a little weird, completely unexpected. I just have to stick with it to find out.

 Or I could just jump to the end…

Val