See You In The Morning

by Mairead Case

See You In the Morning is a book about three 17-year-olds, Rosie, John, and the narrator, who take care of each other one summer in a small Midwestern town. Rosie is a mystic romantic whose dad earned so much money writing screenplays that she doesn’t need an after-school job. John, Rosie’s ex, works at the roller rink in a rabbit costume and takes care of his mom when she's tired after a day cutting hair. The narrator works at a bookstore and sometimes focuses so hard on their reading that they see polka dots take over the room. John is the narrator's best and oldest friend, so now the two of them must be in love, right? Because if they aren't, why stay in town? But if they aren't, who else will ever understand? What is love and how does it work? See You In the Morning happens at diners and house shows, in paragraph-shaped poems, and the narrator's angry, tender, colorful voice.

Genres: Fiction, LGBT, Young Adult, Poetry, Literary Fiction

120 pages, Hardcover

First published September 8, 2015

Reviews

[Sarah Cavar · Rating 5 out of 5]

Like digging into a raw, familiar wound. This one it home for me in particular, because it so powerfully captures growing up ambivalent, alone, queer, and unbelieving in a lower-class, backward, catholic town. This is a small book –– physically and psychologically –– and takes place in quiet scenes through the journal-like narrative of a teenage girl who might want to be a boy. There are moments that the narrative voice is quaint, yet the matter-of-fact naivety works for this story where it may be grating in others. There is a...not necessarily optimism –– this is quite a cynical book about a cynical teen –– but a raw, nude hope that pervades every page like a light dew. Again, like an open wound, like a wound being washed and gentle-bandaged, even if the outcome –– will there be a scar? –– remains unknown.

[Sarah Schantz · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was incredibly honored to write a blurb for this book, and this is not the blurb. This is just a quick love note to say: Read Mairead Case's gorgeously honest and super amazing novel.

[mythosonlyb · Rating 4 out of 5]

Huysuz ve hüzünlü ergenler üzerine okuma yapmayı seviyorum.

On yedi yaşındaki anlatıcımız, son derece dindar Katolik bir aileyle küçük bir kasabada yaşıyor; en yakınları ise Rosie ve John. Lisenin son dönemine yaklaşırken kendi yolunu nasıl çizeceğini, kim olmak istediğini sorguluyor. Anlatıcının yaşadığı yere sığamadığını hissediyoruz. Aynı zamanda ailesinin verdiği örtük mesajlarla da uzaklaşması gerektiğini düşündüğünü anlıyoruz. Kasabada gerçek bir bağ kurabildiği neredeyse tek kişi John. Hatta babasının tavrından, dışarıdan bakıldığında bile onun hüzünlü bir çocuk olarak görülebildiğini fark ediyoruz.

Bence kitap duygusal yoğunluğu güçlü, gençliğin o çalkantılı halini taşıyan kısa ama etkileyici bir anlatıya sahipti. Anlatıcının aidiyet, kimlik ve cinsel yönelim üzerine yaptığı sorgulamalar son derece doğal ve içten bir yerden geliyordu. Bu sorgulamalar ergenliğin hızlı iniş çıkışları gibi değil; daha çok durgun bir gölün karşısında hayatını anlamlandırmaya çalışan bir gencin dingin ama derin iç konuşmaları gibiydi. En azından bende bıraktığı his tam olarak böyleydi.

[Tzipora · Rating 4 out of 5]

First of all, I can’t mention enough how utterly gorgeous the physical book itself is. It’s one of those small hardcovers that just feel so right and cozy in your hands. The cover image is striking and utterly unique and the orange sky- as someone who loves orange, that and the whole appearance of this book got me excited. Cooler still- I got this book in a curated mystery book box from a local indie bookstore (Go send some love to my buddies at Uncharted and get your own custom mystery box here!)

This is a short book, about 125 pages. It’s a coming-of-age novel that takes place in the summer before senior year. Our narrator is a little offbeat, into punk music and basement performances but she doesn’t so much for that aesthetic or any idea of what you’d think of I called her quirky. She is, but not young novel quirky, a wholly unique person but there’s something about the way the book is written that makes her seem real, like a friend you’re having a conversation with. There isn’t really a plot here but much of what happens is internal, inside our main character’s head and also the conversations she has with her best friend John and the older neighbor man Mr. Green.

See You in the Morning is the kind of book that makes small presses so wonderful. It’s different. It’s fresh. The way author Mairead Case uses language and description is striking and beautiful, she writes these sentences you want to sit with and read several times over. As a reader who also writes, I was continually impressed by the wildly unique and surprising descriptions. It’s hard not to default to basics or cliches at least some of the time but again and again, Case’s descriptions were like reading something totally new.

Here’s an example (and I figure the style may not work for everyone but if you like this as much as I do, find a copy of this book!):

“Robert is my instructor. His car is small and tan. He smells like it, like MSG and nicotine and other small, tan things. Robert’s eyes are maybe a little mean, or maybe he’s always looking into too much light. His hands are gentle, notebook-paper-colored, and his hair falls into his face.”

One thing I found especially interesting is how often the main character talks about bodies, or in a sense more about forgetting she or others have them, of suddenly remembering they exist, of dreaming we didn’t need our bodies anymore. Others have marked this book as LGBT but I’m not sure about that and neither is our main character. There are no labels but there’s definitely a queer aesthetic and outlook here and I loved how well done it was without having to spell everything out explicitly. I read a review earlier today by a gay friend here on Goodreads talking about bodies and the separation of body and mind. Maybe we all feel that sometimes and in different ways but there’s an inherent queerness in questioning the binaries and looking behind the body. How the book deals with this was really cool.

And the language. Just rad. I would read more by this author. I only wish it had been a little longer or that the ending had been a little less ambiguous. That’s something I’m usually a fan of, but I’m afraid I either don’t “get” what the author was trying to say with the ending or perhaps the whole point is that it’s completely open to interpretation because so much is really just beginning for our character and for anyone that age.

[rina · Rating 3 out of 5]

”Never let someone who doesn’t love you take your picture.”

[Emily · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was surprised to see this odd little book labeled TEEN by the library; despite the teenage narrator, it felt very adult to me. Like it was designed to evoke awkward, uncomfortable, inarticulate, but deeply familiar memories and feelings, not current experiences. It's one of those that is all about the simple but lovely writing and the mood it conjures up; it does a lot in 120 pages without really building much of a plot or deep characters. For such a short book, it's a slow, immersive build that conjures up feelings of hot summer nights on front porches full of complicated feelings, which may or may not even be real memories.

[Terence · Rating 4 out of 5]

My favorite part of this novel is the narrator's voice, it feels unique but familiar like a friend you had in school. The shows and questions about love and college feel real. It doesn't exactly have a linear pathway or set of events, it's kind of circular and insular. Sometimes that annoys me, it really is the calling card of a lot of indie-lit, but there really is something special about the narrative voice that elevates this away from a lot of books dealing in similar themes.

[Megan · Rating 5 out of 5]

This novel seems like a close friend to Sara Jaffe's Dryland: both are quietly affecting, elegant, touching coming-of-age narratives with moorings in punk/indie rock. This narrator is genderqueer/genderambiguous and in love with their best friend; they are full of startling observations and big love for the world and other people. An assured and delightful debut.

[Eun Kim · Rating 5 out of 5]

this is the kind of book I would want to write, and this is the kind of feelings I want people to feel

[William · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thank you for writing this book Mairead!

[Brandon Will · Rating 5 out of 5]

A true performance piece. You are in this character's mind, living their life with them. It's a beautiful mind-ride to be on. Profound trains of thought, unbelievably concisely captured. And a perfectly rendered queer voice with attractions that aren't limited to a gender, growing up economically challenged--a voice many of us talk about never seeing in YA lit: well here it is--behold it.

[Ted · Rating 4 out of 5]

I thought Case did a great job of capturing the mind, moods, and motivation of teenagers today. If you have ever raised a teenage daughter, will be raising a teenage daughter, or are someday thinking about raising a teenaged daughter this book is for you. Great book.

[Sharon Seal · Rating 1 out of 5]

I guess I missed the point... but this book was totally pointless, almost DNF

[Sofia · Rating 3 out of 5]

just a 126 page poem - absolutely beautiful. slightly less plot than anticipated

[Ethan Sleeman · Rating 4 out of 5]

An absolutely delightful little novel. A really beautiful coming of age (coming-into-self, maybe?) novel, which is a well that never runs dry IMO since it’s the universal project of being a person.

[Liliana · Rating 4 out of 5]

What a delightful little book about being 17 and confused and longing for something that you don’t quite know what it is

[Anjali · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is a painting.

[Isabel Nguyen · Rating 3 out of 5]

Seventeen years old is the time when you think you should have your life together, or the time you should be getting it together. “See You in The Morning” by Mairead Case is a book about three seventeen year olds. The book is told from the narrator’s perspective, their name and gender never being mentioned. John and the narrator have been best friends their entire lives. Rosie is their friend too, but she’s also John’s ex. Sometimes everything seems hopeless. This book is a stream of the narrator’s thoughts, feelings, and experiences in their last peaceful summer.
I really liked this book. Mairead Case’s writing is very intriguing. She somehow took a bunch of thoughts the narrator (along with myself) have had about crushes, the future and everything in between wrote them out in a way that could be understood. This book also had an underlying tone of angst that made everything feel more real. Personally, I felt like I really related to the narrator, and I think almost any teen could.
Although the book was enjoyable, I felt as though I was often confused while I was reading. The book doesn’t really have a sense of time, and I found myself having to reread sections to figure out what happened when. As I mentioned before, the book seems to be a stream of the narrator’s thoughts. I can understand (and have experienced) having your thought process being all over the place, but sometimes the narrator would change the subject very randomly, which was hard to follow at times

[RK · Rating 5 out of 5]

This beautifully printed little book is a raw, beautiful story of a young woman coming of age in a too-small town. The narrator was real to me, and her inner world one I felt honored to peek into. A few of her observations about the world caught me off-guard (in a barking laugher sort of way; in a painful look in the mirror way).

Plus, tbh there's something thrilling about reading a book about high schoolers by someone I knew in high school. Fabulous first novel, Mairead. <3

[Ellen · Rating 5 out of 5]

I resisted the urge to tumble my way through this in an afternoon and consumed it in tiny nibbles over a few days, like the best chocolate. I loved this book, and not just because I was once a sad purple-haired teenager with a wonder-crush on Mairead's writing. (Though, full disclosure: more than a decade ago I wrote her a probably-creepy email telling her that the writing on her blog made me forget to breathe sometimes.)

[Amanda Lichtenstein · Rating 5 out of 5]

A stunning little treasure of a book, packed with gorgeous sentences that stop you in your reading tracks. Alluring metaphor, heartbreaking proverbial truths, searing attention to detail, all packed down and embedded in a sweet little bud of a coming-of-age, stream-of-consciousness story about a girl on the precipice of change.

"The first time always feels like outer space."

[Rachel · Rating 4 out of 5]

This story was simple yet incredible. The way the novel was structured only enhanced the characters, especially the narrator. The reader is completely enveloped inside of the narrator's personality and way of thinking. "See You In The Morning," is one of those books that I wish didn't have to end. I enjoyed reading it from beginning to end.

[Leslie · Rating 5 out of 5]

A fantastic book--gorgeously written and full of quiet angst--one of the most affecting things I read all year. Mandatory reading for a niche bracket I am all about: current and former punk teens with complicated ties to Catholicism.

[Anna Keating · Rating 4 out of 5]

Bravo, Mairead Case.

[Kim · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a beautiful book. Do yourself an honor and read it.

[Megan Kirby · Rating 3 out of 5]

strong teenage girl voice.