Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow

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Synopsis

Let the games begin! From the New York Times best-selling author of The Storied Life of A. J. Fikry—a glorious and immersive novel about two childhood friends, once estranged, who reunite as adults to create video games, finding an intimacy in digital worlds that eludes them in their real lives.

On a bitter-cold day, in the December of his junior year at Harvard, Sam Masur exits a subway car and sees, amid the hordes of people waiting on the platform, Sadie Green. He calls her name. For a moment, she pretends she hasn’t heard him, but then, she turns, and a game begins: a legendary collaboration that will launch them to stardom. They borrow money, beg favors, and, before even graduating college, they have created their first blockbuster, Ichigo: a game where players can escape the confines of a body and the betrayals of a heart, and where death means nothing more than a chance to restart and play again. This is the story of the perfect worlds Sam and Sadie build, the imperfect world they live in, and of everything that comes after success: Money. Fame. Duplicity. Tragedy.

Spanning thirty years, from Cambridge, Massachusetts, to Venice Beach, California, and lands in between and far beyond, Gabrielle Zevin’s Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow is a dazzling and intricately imagined novel that examines the multifarious nature of identity, games as artform, technology and the human experience, disability, failure, the redemptive possibilities in play, and above all, our need to connect: to be loved and to love. Yes, it is a love story, but it is not one you have read before.

Synopses source: StoryGraph

Review

Genre(s): Fiction, BIPOC rep, Coming of Age
HB&W Rating: 2 stars
View on StoryGraph, Goodreads
Buy on Barnes & Noble, Amazon

As a someone who was the only woman in her programming and drafting classes, one of only a handful of women in later engineering classes, and as a long time video game enthusiast, I really wanted to like this book. But, it seems like I am once again on the side of the unpopular opinion regarding this book. There were several things that I did like about the book, its use of gaming and game design as a framework to tell the story, for example. But while the book was very engaging and immersive, I felt like it did not accomplish what it set out to do.

Both characters were believably flawed, which she would come to expect from a “slice of life” style book such as this. However, I felt like Sam’s character grew and matured, and Sadie did not. I did not care for Sadie at all. She was incredibly self-centered, immature, and often petty, which was easy to dismiss when she was younger, but harder to dismiss as she got older. It’s as if life taught her nothing. That’s not to say I don’t sympathize with what her character experienced throughout the novel, but where is her growth? The last chapter felt like it was too little too late. Creepy, predatory Dov had more character arc than Sadie. While it was interesting seeing how the characters traumas and experiences shaped their reactions to things throughout the story, I just would’ve liked to have seen them grow a little bit.

Of all of the characters, Marx was my favorite. I loved how the author showed him as the glue holding everything together in more ways than one, their friendship with each other and with other people, their business together, their lives. I will say I was surprised by his chapter towards the end, which felt a bit incongruous with the rest of the storytelling in the book.

Something else I did like about the book was the social commentary regarding discrimination, bias, and prejudice, about race, gender, disability, and sexual preference, but it felt occasionally a bit too on the nose at times.

But if I have to have one chief complaint, it’s the concept of friendship and how it is portrayed in this book. Friendship is supposed to be the main theme of this book, showing how friendships are more important than romantic relationships. In my opinion, this book fell drastically short of the mark with this theme. I didn’t believe the friendship between Sam and Sadie at all. It felt to me like we were told over and over again, how good of friends they were, but we were mostly shown examples of the opposite. I might even go so far as to say their relationship was toxic at times. Things were resolved in the end, but again, we were told in only a few short lines without any actions by the characters to really show us that resolution, and it was pretty unsatisfying.

Ultimately, while this book was engaging and had a few redeeming qualities, it fell very short of the mark, was unsatisfying, and just not for me.

Until next time,

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