The Hard Tomorrow

Eleanor Davis — 2019

The gorgeous and empathetic story of one couple’s search for hope and a peaceful future Hannah is a thirty-something wife, home-health worker, and antiwar activist. Her husband, Johnny, is a stay-at-home pothead working—or "working"—on building them a house before the winter chill sets in. They're currently living and screwing in the back of a truck, hoping for a pregnancy, which seems like it will never come. Legs in the air, for a better chance at conception, Hannah scans fertility Reddits while Johnny dreams about propagating plants—kale, tomatoes—to ensure they have sufficient sustenance should the end times come, which, given their fragile democracy strained under the weight of a carceral state and the risk of horrible war, doesn’t seem so far off. Helping Hannah in her fight for the future is her best friend Gabby, a queer naturalist she idolizes and who adores her. Helping Johnny build the house is Tyler, an off-the-grid conspiracy theorist driven sick by his own cloudy notions of reality. Told with tenderness and care in an undefined near future, Eleanor Davis's The Hard Tomorrow blazes unrestrained, as moments of human connection are doused in fear and threats. Her astute projections probe at current anxieties in a cautionary tale that begs the question: What will happen after tomorrow?

Reviews

Lindy@lindyb

Apr 2, 2024

This did not feel finished. The author spends 90% of the novel building conflicts between the characters which are revealed to one another over the course of a single day, and then, once the conflicts are out in the open, no one attempts to resolve anything. (view spoiler)[ It's just nine months later and the main character has a baby (but still no house, and who knows about a job or friends or an activist community), because babies fix everything I guess? (hide spoiler)]

Maggie Gordon@maggieg

Aug 13, 2022

I usually like Eleanor Davis' work quite a lot. It's often a bit surreal and filled with metaphors. The Hard Tomorrow, on the other hand, takes a rough turn into realism that didn't work for me. The story is supposed to be about hope. We follow a couple in the near future whose lives are a mess. Our female lead is an activist, and her male partner is a layabout stoner. There are terrible political things afoot, our couple lives in a car, their friends are sent to jail, and the stoner accidentally kills his friend. But then they get pregnant and that's hope, I suppose? I feel like Davis is trying to be very earnest with this story, but baby = hope and delight, particularly in light of the rest of the book, seems so facile and unearned. Our male lead LITERALLY kills his friend. But hey, baby! Forget about all the terrible stuff that just happened! I don't want to dismiss the idea that hope does require us to live for tomorrow. That for many people the whole point of hope is to create a world for their kids, but The Hard Tomorrow is too shallow to explore hope in any meaningful way. Definitely a miss for me. (Avoids 1 star because the art was great, but only barely.)