Winner of Best Fiction in the 2022 Goodreads Awards, Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin deserves the fame. I read this book in under 3 days (2 of which were work days) and finishing a 400-pager in that time speaks to how engaging and hard to put down it was. This is the story of a friendship between two imperfect human beings, united by their love for video games. Check out the synopsis:
Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow
By Gabrielle Zevin | Goodreads
In this exhilarating novel, two friends–often in love, but never lovers–come together as creative partners in the world of video game design, where success brings them fame, joy, tragedy, duplicity, and, ultimately, a kind of immortality.
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. These friends, intimates since childhood, borrow money, beg favors, and, before even graduating college, they have created their first blockbuster, Ichigo. Overnight, the world is theirs. Not even twenty-five years old, Sam and Sadie are brilliant, successful, and rich, but these qualities won’t protect them from their own creative ambitions or the betrayals of their hearts.
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, 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.
Content notes include disability, car accident, death, gun violence, pregnancy, postpartum depression, depression, injury detail.
Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow – Review
While Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow sounded like a promising read, I did not expect to get so invested in it! Sadie and Sam first met at the hospital. Sadie’s sister was undergoing treatment while Sam had been in a car accident, recovering from a shattered leg. Sam was twelve and Sadie was eleven. They bonded in the hospital’s gaming room, taking turns playing the same characters.
Characters
All of the characters in this book were written with great care and detail, and at no point did I feel that I was given too much. They invoked a number of emotions in me – love, frustration, sadness, excitement,… you name it!
Sam
Sam is the son of a Jewish man and Korean American woman. His father was not a big part of his life and his mother’s death left pain that followed him everywhere. Sam is an introvert with great ideas and no qualms in sitting and executing them. If he can’t do something, he will find someone else who can make up for his shortcomings. A lot of times, this evolved naturally for Sam. His friendship with both Sadie and Marx were not orchestrated – they are people who entered and enriched his life and he deeply valued and loved them.
Sam’s upbringing is a huge part of the narrative, even though it isn’t the centre. Growing up in Los Angeles with his grandparents, surrounded by people who looked like him, but also being in a bigger city gave him a world of experience. He remembers his mother’s struggles in making a name for herself. He knows what it is like to be mixed race and not know where he belongs. There are many existential questions throughout this book and I enjoyed Sam’s perspective a lot.
Sadie
Sadie is an amazing designer. I adored her but her decisions were most frustrating to me. When I was in university, there was a huge push to get women in sciences. Sadie went to college around a similar time and knew that making a name in the gaming industry as a woman would have challenges too. In the early years of Unfair Games (the company that she co-founded with Sam and Marx), she wanted credit and visibility for the things that she had accomplished without making the effort to show up in a social environment.
That I found frustrating. You can’t want something and not work for it. She would often get mad at Sam for taking the credit and he would remind her that he always gave her credit but what people chose to write about him and the game was not in his hands.
Sadie grew up with an older sister who was constantly at the hospital. One time, there was a space summer camp that she wanted to go to but because of her sister’s surgery, she wasn’t allowed to. Though Alice was occasionally in the story, if you have experience growing up with a sick sibling, you may see Sadie’s character development more clearly. I am very thankful for Erynn’s insight in this matter.
Marx
Getting to know Marx as equivalent to wanting him as a real life friend. He loved Sadie and Sam in equal measure and was always able to call them out on their ridiculous expectations or missteps. Though there is only one part of the book told from his perspective, it was one of the most impactful narratives in the story. He was funny, charming, charismatic, compassionate, he had an insight into the world and its workings that Sadie and Sam came to rely on without realising. He paved the path for their genius to shine through.
Marx loved theatre and his journey in acting reminded me of Sam’s mother, Anna. I love seeing how the same profession manifests in the lives of people at different points in time and this truly enhanced the characters for me. Gabrielle Zevin is a fabulous writer who builds her side characters meticulously and this story would have not been what it was without Marx.
Dov
Dov was the older man in a young love. He was Sadie’s professor, someone very hard to please but brutally honest and opinionated. Dov was the first person to see the spark in Sadie. He encouraged her and in his own unique quirky way, loved her. He could not commit to her but he still respected her and continued to be an important present in her life, which to me wasn’t surprising.
Sometimes people hurt us and we have to build walls around us but they are also important to us and we can eventually learn to have a healthier relationship with them. Dov and Sadie matured throughout the book. I passionately hated Dov most of the time. He was not someone I would ever get along with. But the best part about him as a supporting character was that he was as gray as the rest of the cast. He was not the villain. He was just human, an immigrant trying to make a living, unapologetic in his desires and interests.
Writing & Storytelling
There are many styles of writing that are prevalent in literature: chronologically order, time jumps in chapters, flashbacks to the past to name a few. I think flashbacks take the most skill because in the process of talking about the past, you don’t want to distract the reader from the present situation. Gabrielle Zevin develops the characters and their families masterfully with flashbacks, sprinkling little Easter eggs throughout the book, rewarding the attentive reader who can connect the dots. Sadie notices the poster of a Korean beer commercial with the most beautiful woman in town at Dong Bong Pizza, Sam’s grandparents restaurant. Later, Sam recalls his mother’s professional life and sheds light on the timing of when she starred in that very commercial. Another of my favorites was when Marx and Sadie get together, from Sadie’s point of view, Sam has shaved off his hair. Later, in Marx’s perspective, I learned how that came to be.
Marx leaves the pitch by the Worths for Our Infinite Days on S’s desk, leaving the reader guessing who it was – Sam or Sadie, who did Marx want a second opinion from? Later, Ant and Sam find it in someone’s office. I am not telling you who.
While the flashbacks built the characters, the snippets from future interviews provided foreshadowing of what was to come. A fallout is always alluded to and how it transpires is a journey worth reading.
In this manner, Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow had a game feel to it too.
Themes
Creativity
Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow is a tribute to creativity through video games, literature (Shakespeare), music and painting. The cover of the book comes from the famous painting of The Great Wave off Kanagawa by Hokusai which inspires one of the games by Sadie and Sam. The title is from Marx’s favorite part about Macbeth, a speech of the same name, spoken by Macbeth himself in Act 5 Scene 5 (source):
There would have been a time for such a word.
Shakespear
Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day
To the last syllable of recorded time,
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.
As they play games, they think about what makes a good game and when the opportunity presents itself, they embark on creating a game together. Sadie is a trained game designer while Sam is self-taught. He is often the visionary while she is the one who brings his visions to life, blending technology and storytelling. Ichigo holds a special place in both their hearts but their relationship and skill is no longer the same when Ichigo is completed. Once the creative process is done, the professional obligations begin – marketing, publicity, and of course, creating a 2.0 version. While Sadie choses to take the backseat with prompting the game and Marx takes care of the day to day running of their company, Unfair Games, Sam ends up being the face of many of the games that they three work on together.
There is tension around a woman making it into a male-dominated industry. There are questions about pursuing a craft to make money or for the sake of creativity. Sam uses Maplewood to make many political statements, the first one being Sadie’s idea to introduce marriage in the MMORPG. I loved how real world events were woven into the narrative. Their effect on society and the gaming industry is explored beautifully through the happenings at Unfair Games.
There is a deep love for video games and how they have been pivotal in shaping players, particularly Sam and Sadie. Games continue to be something they return to in their adult years.
Changing Times
A book spanning three decades should showcase changing relationships and priorities for the characters. This was one of my favorite parts about Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow. As time passed, the characters and their relationships evolved too. Sam and Sadie grow throughout the story. They are ambitious young people who are important to each other but also recognize that their friendship is one that does not require them to talk to each other every day or live in the same city. They can live their lives separately and still be in each other’s lives.
Spanning thirty years gave Sadie and Sam the opportunity to grow and later reflect on how far they had come. They may have completely different lives from when they were young kids or in university, but their love for games and creating will always bring them back together. They thought about how things would have been different if Sadie and Sam had been born in a different time. They were one of the first to develop video games, when the industry was still quite new, gaming engines were still few in numbers and technology still had a long way to go for hardware, speed, performance and graphics. Sam remarks how launching a Japanese-inspired game would have had a number of hurdles in a saturated market of gaming and the political atmosphere. There is a snippet of an interview that Sam did with a reporter where the reporter asked him about cultural appropriation. His response is one that will always stay with me.
Sam: “The alternative to appropriation is a world in which artists only reference their own cultures.”
Reporter: “That’s an oversimplification of the issue.”
Sam: “The alternative to appropriation is a world where white European people make art about white European people with only white European references in it. Swap African or Asian or Latin or whatever culture you want for European. A world where everyone is blind and deaf to any culture or experience that is not their own. I hate that world don’t you? I’m terrified of that world and I don’t want to live in that world, and as a mixed race person, I literally don’t exist in it. My dad, who I barely knew, was Jewish. My mom was an American-born Korean. I was raised by Korean immigrant grandparents in Korea Town Los Angeles and as any mixed race person will tell you– to be half of two things is to be whole of nothing.”
Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow
Sam eventually has to pick up the running of the company. Sadie does not have space for Unfair Games and she takes a backseat. I got the impression that she remained a founder and executive but no longer actively developed games at the time the book ends. The author does write of the possibility that Sam and Sadie could develop a game again. I liked that messaging. Life goes on, things change but our passions are always there for us to tap into.
“Every time I run into you for the rest of our lives, I’ll ask you to make a game with me. There’s some groove in my brain that insists it is a good idea.”
“Isn’t that the definition of insanity? Doing the same thing over and over but expecting a different result.”
“That’s a game character’s life, too,” Sam said. “The world of infinite restarts. Start again at the beginning, this time you might win. And it’s not as if all our results were bad. I love the things we made. We were a great team.”
Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow
Friendship
In chatting with Laur, we reflected on the parts of Sam and Sadie that they chose to share with one another. It speaks to how friendships and relationships tend to be. We share all of us with very few people, and can be quite selective in other aspects of us that people see. While Sadie did not want Sam to know about Dov when they were together while building Ichigo, Sam would never talk about his pains with Sadie. He wasn’t too thrilled about a broken body and had such high pain endurance levels that it was a normal part of life for him.
For Sadie, I suspect there was a kind of creativity she glimpsed from being with Dov. He saw potential in her that no one else ever had. There were darker sides to the relationship but by acknowledging them to her friends, she may have had to give up the brighter sides as well. So selective sharing was something both Sam and Sadie engaged in in order to keep their main project – their game – as the focal point of their interactions. While Sadie would not have grown into the designer and world builder she was without Sam, Sam would also not have become the creator he became.
This book is sometimes slotted under the romance genre and I heartily disagree. Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow is about love and friendship. It is about being in each other’s lives and accepting the ways in which people show up in ours. It is a reminder that we can love someone without choosing to marry them – it is healthy to have relationships and strong feelings for someone who is not our spouse or child or family. Friends make life special and this book highlights that through Sadie and Sam.
Without a doubt, Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow will stay with me a long time. I may be a few years younger than Sadie and Sam and not a gamer, I adore this book for the story but also for the writing. While they return to video games, I return to books and this is one I look forward to revisiting in the future.
Have you read this one or is it on your TBR? Add it to your Goodreads if you don’t want to forget it!
Be First to Comment