In Jesse Q. Sutanto’s Next Time Will Be Our Turn, sixteen-year-old Izzy is shocked, along with the rest of her family, when her glamorous grandmother, Magnolia, walks into the family’s New Year’s celebration with a woman on her arm. In the midst of the fallout from this shocking revelation, Magnolia sits Izzy down to share her life and love story with the granddaughter she recognizes much of herself in.
Going into this book, I knew the basic premise, but what I did not realize is this book is set in the near future. Much of the book is the now-seventy-three-year-old Magnolia’s story, where she grows up and comes into adulthood in the ‘90s and early 2000s. The climax of her story is barely a decade before this book was published. Meanwhile in Izzy’s timeline, she references little tidbits like the world reaching zero carbon emissions sixteen years ago, making the stars clear in the sky again. What at first glance might seem like a random, even gimmicky choice is in fact central to what this book is. Imagining our generation as the elders in an imperfect but better world is such a quiet reassurance, like Magnolia is reaching out to me as much as to Izzy. There is hope baked into the very bones of this story.
If it sounds like I’m making this book sound overly sweet, I promise it is not. Izzy’s voice is snarky and sincere as teenagers often are, and in their banter, Magnolia often sounds very millennial, a thought that raised my eyebrow for a moment, until I realized that, of course, she is one. For all its humor, though, this book nearly brought me to tears at several points, and I am not someone who cries easily. Every moment in this book is treated with care, and it is full of little moments, good and bad, that say so much.
As intensely character-driven as this book is, it would not work if the characters were not strong. While Izzy makes up more of a frame than the bulk of the story, I found her easy to connect to and was perfectly willing to follow her for a whole book before Magnolia took over. Magnolia, though, is a star and watching her go from a nervous teenage girl to the formidable woman she is to Izzy was a joy. Magnolia’s family had so much depth, as well, frustrating as they could be, and in fact it was her sister, perhaps surprisingly, who most held my fascination (outside of Magnolia, that is). While I don’t want to say too much about the star-crossed romance she falls into, I found their scenes a breath of fresh air when it was needed, and I completely believed why Magnolia would hold this in her heart for so long.
I have not read much general fiction the last few years, but this book reminded me why I should. It has love and tragedy, and like all of my favorite stories, the human connection is the point. It is a hand reaching out to its audience, both Izzy and the reader, and it is beautiful. I cannot wait to read it again.
