Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin
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.
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Never has a book angered me and broken my heart to such an extent. Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow ended up being such an immersive book. It almost felt like losing yourself in a game. It felt somewhat nostalgic to me as a 90s kid who spent a LOT of time on the N64 and I liked the perspective of two characters as world builders and living through those games with them. The characters were very multi-dimensional if not totally likeable and I think they perfectly portrayed the messy imperfectness of humanity. This book, in taking place over the span of a couple of decades, covered life through a lot of cultural changes as well and I love how that was reflected in the changing friendships as well as the games that these friends created.
We read this book from both Sam and Sadie’s points of view with a small fraction of chapters from Marx as well. These three characters embark on a risky partnership during their early years at Harvard, pinning their futures and dreams on a game called Ichigo. Sadie and Sam are just learning each other again after years on the outs but they’re discovering that they work better together. Marx keeps them both afloat when they get too lost in the games they play. The dynamic between these three was complicated and messy but that made it feel all the more real and drove home the point that humans are imperfect and we’re capable of making the stupidest of mistakes.
As a reader who LOVES character-driven stories and has a hard time liking a book with unlikeable characters, I’m slightly surprised that I enjoyed this one. Sadie is frustrating (that’s the most minor offense), Sam is cold-hearted, and Marx is a little oblivious. Not one single one of them was loveable, yet I couldn’t stop reading, I had to know where their lives lead them. The thing that frustrated me the most with them was just how self-UNaware these characters were. Sadie and Sam are the same. They are mirror images of each other and how they deal with trauma is the same. Yet Sam can’t find ways to relate better to Sadie so instead feels sorry for himself, and Sadie will paint Sam in a most unflattering light describing him in the exact words that perfectly describe herself. Why couldn’t they just communicate?
“You have a way of bending reality to suit your own agenda”
-Sadie Green
The thing I loved about this book was how immersive it was. I’m not sure how but the writing completely captivated me. I’m usually not a fan of this writing style but it did the trick. It felt nostalgic and relatable. Wonderous and painful all at once. Most of the book was very firmly set in real life but I also enjoyed the chapters where the read is completely immersed in the games Sadie and Sam create as well. I think Zevin did a fantastic job in getting to the beating heart of gaming and relating it to an audience that may not be that familiar with that world.
All in all, it was an enjoyable if not frustrating read. The writing was enchanting, the characters were difficult. I feel like it’s a great escape but it’s also very heartbreaking if you’re not one for the trauma of the contemporary genre. I gave this read 4 stars, mainly for the books ability to immerse me in this world so deeply.