A book about childhood friends making a video game is an unexpected, captivating setup for this wonderfully deep, epic dive into connection, creativity, tragedy, and love.
"And what is love, in the end?" Alabaster said. "Except the irrational desire to put evolutionary competitiveness aside in order to ease someone else's journey through life?"
Childhood friends Sam Masur and Sadie Green are brilliant, creative collaborators and a wonderfully complementary pair since their chance meeting in childhood--and they're also (sometimes) full of love for each other.
Reunited in college, Sam and Sadie come together to try to create a masterpiece: a video game unlike any that has come before. Something immersive, something fascinating, something irresistible.
A programmer is a diviner of possible outcomes, and a seer of unknown worlds.
Their wild success and their devastating lows--both individual and collective--test their loyalty to each other and to their vision, offer joy and unexpected pain, and push the limits of their friendship and connection.
A book about longtime friends creating a video game feels like an unusual vehicle for delivering the beauty and depth Zevin builds into each page. But Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow (the title comes from the second line of Macbeth) is an epic view into a lifetime of friendship and love, tragedy, renewed faith in others, and overcoming incredible hardship. It's a captivating account of the making of a video game, the love of other specific games and playing in general, and the power of play to bring people together.
Why wouldn't you tell someone you loved them? Once you loved someone, you repeated it until they were tired of hearing it. You said it until it ceased to have meaning. Why not? Of course, you goddamn did.
There are fascinating, heartbreaking, heartwarming echoes and swirls of themes and details that repeat and connect through time and through virtual reality--and that frequently cross into the gritty messiness of real life. Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow is smart and holds layer upon layer to explore.
There are too many beautiful quotes in the book for me to share them here. I savored this story and delighted in its characters and just loved this book.
Do you have any Bossy thoughts about this book?
Gabrielle Zevin is also the author of The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry, a book I loved and need to review on this site.
I received a digital advance reader copy of this book courtesy of Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group and NetGalley.