Tomorrow will be Better

A whole bag of books for $5? Exactly what I wanted for Christmas, as my family knew (when your Christmas wish list says only "old books" it takes family to understand). So after opening a huge stack of books, I've got a lot of reading to do.

The first book I read was Tomorrow will be Better, by Betty Smith (Harper Brothers, 1948). Betty's the author of A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, which I read about a year ago and didn't have any desire to re-read. I thought maybe this book might be...well, better. I was mistaken.

I don't know exactly why, but the author seems to feel superior to her characters even as she tries to portray them with sympathy. Nobody in the Brooklyn neighborhoods she describes (with one exception--more later) seems able to escape the situations they're born into; no parents are able to let their children go; no marriages are happy unions of compatible people.

The exception? An Italian-American young man who persuades his girlfriend that since marriage seems out of the question for them (due to parental disapproval because of religious differences), and since they love each other, sleeping together is their best option (I don't know how they managed this with the frequency they seem to have done, actually. She lived with her dissaproving mother in a tiny flat and he lived with his parents. Automobiles and hotel rooms were not available to them). Of course, she becomes pregnant, they marry and move in with his indulgent parents, who love her and treat her with compassion and sensitivity. Oh, and the young man financially supports everyone by means of his very successful shoeshine business. This guy was, for some reason, considered to be a bad sort.

The heroine, thoughout the book, struggles to find her identity, and in the end, merely moves on. Sort of.

So out the book goes.