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| Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin |
Book title:
Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow
Author:
Gabrielle Zevin
Genre:
Literary fiction
Published: July
5, 2022
482 pages
“What is a game?” Marx said. “It’s tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow. It’s the possibility of infinite rebirth, infinite redemption. The idea that if you keep playing, you could win. No loss is permanent, because nothing is permanent, ever.”
On a cold December day of his junior year at Harvard, Sam Masur sees his childhood friend Sadie Green at a crowded train station and calls her name. Their reunion sets off a collaboration that launches them to fame and leads to a decades-long tale of friendship and rivalry.
Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow is Gabrielle Zevin’s literary fiction. The story follows the two main characters, Sam and Sadie, from their childhood in the 1980’s when they meet and bond while playing video games to the 1990’s and the early 2000’s when they start a company that produces video games, some of them huge successes, others not so much.
Let me start by saying that my favorite genres are historical fiction, fantasy, and dystopian fiction—so basically stories that don’t take place in the contemporary world. However, every now and then I want to branch out and try something different, like an occasional literary fiction. Sometimes it pays off (see my review of Paulo Coelho’s The Alchemist); other times not. Unfortunately, this was one of the times when I was slightly disappointed.
My biggest problem with the book was the narration style. Zevin uses an omniscient third-person narrator who occasionally tells minor spoilers of future events. I don’t always mind that type of narration (in fact, I loved the spoiler-y narrator of Markus Zusak’s The Book Thief), but this time I felt the narration kept me at an arm’s length from the characters and made it difficult for me to care about them. So much so that I didn’t cry a single tear when a character in the novel dies. And I cry at everything! Even at books that I don’t particularly like.
I’m also not a gamer, so I don’t know much about the games Sam and Sadie grew up with. It was interesting to learn about the video game industry and how the games are made, but it wasn’t enough to make me love the book. I also wasn’t a fan of how all of Sam’s and Sadie’s problems were the result of a miscommunication trope where they both refused to say what they meant and to be open about their feelings.
However, Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow is one of those books where I can see why someone else might love it. So even though due to my own personal lack of enjoyment I’m only giving it three stars, I can recommend it to someone who loves literary fiction tackling the themes of love, friendship, and betrayal.
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