A review by just_one_more_paige
Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin

emotional reflective medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.0

 
Alright, everybody was doing it, so I did too. But for real this book topped all the popular-vote-based "best of" lists for 2022. And you know I always want to see for myself what the hype is about. Plus, I had a few people that I know well recommend it to me (from a variety of sources, not always the usual ones), so I really felt like I needed to make it happen. Shoutout to Libro.fm for the ALC. 
 
Sam and Sadie meet as kids in a hospital. Sam is there for a long term recovery from a car accident he was in. Sadie is there becasue her sister is undergoing cancer treatment. The two strike up a friendship built around playing computer/video games. As the years pass, this friendship sees ups and downs, years where they don't speak at all mixed with periods where they spend more time with each other than anyone else. And together, along with the third of their close-knit triangle, Marx, they launch a business partnership that catapults them into gaming stardom. As they deal with the creative pressures of game-building to relationship complexities to health and disability concerns, the three will find refuge over and over in the endless possibilities of gameplay. 
 
I can see why this book was so popular. What a story! Zevin writes the nuances and complications of friendship and love (platonic and otherwise) with such attention to detail and passion for the small things that might get overlooked normally, but truly create the backbone of connection. That was, for me, the absolute highlight of this novel. The portrayal of the intersections of friendship and love, and the different ways they manifest, as well as how we can be fine, even good, without them, but with them comes the potential to be great, was on point. It renders, gorgeously, the way experiences and interactions with others makes us who we are, pushes us to try and achieve more. Sam and Sadie and Marx are an interconnected threesome that is so fully dimensional and I loved reading their stories, both separately and coming into and out of each other's lives (or the waxing and waning of the importance of the role they play in each other's lives). 
 
I also want to highlight the pure fun I had with all the games nostalgia, like Oregon Trail and Tomagochi. I mean, I would not even really consider myself a gamer, as it were, but these are like, millennial staples, and I loved seeing it. If I'm being honest, I actually was really interested in all the details of game-building, the story-telling and artistics aspects, and how those interacted with the tech capabilities, and all the ways they built off of or limited each other, as well as the progression of gaming over the years. It was creatively fascinating to me, even without a very extensive background in gaming. That was a really pleasant surprise. 
 
In another moment of honesty, I really wanted to *love* this book. And I definitely enjoyed it; I really did. But I just didn't love it. I was so invested in the whole thing the way it was that when a certain traumatic event happens, the way it was handled pulled me all the way out of things. And to be clear, not the event itself, though it was unexpected and jarring. I am referring to the couple of sections right after the event, where the narrative perspective and style both changed. The vibe of the reading changed so much during those two sections, and they were not super short sections, and I just...I lost my flow with the story. However, the sweet and full-circle healing poignancy of the ending itself was nicely done. 
 
Finally, in addition to the full relationships and characters, as well as the fun of the gaming aspects, Zevin weaves in a number of difficult and polarizing topics. I found it interesting that, in most cases, they were presented in the way(s) the characters experienced or understood them, without any in-depth attempts anywhere to grow themselves, and only marginal movements to affect change (though with a heartbreaking example of how even that little amount of taking a stand can be risky to a person's well-being, yikes.) I don't feel like Zvevin's writing was, anywhere, a calling out or call to action for any of these topics covered, but rather an observational lens of the ways they affect people. Touching on childhood illness, physical disability, sexism in gaming/tech industries, the inhumanity of long-term dealing with the healthcare system, racial and interracial nuances, cultural appropriation, sexuality/lgbtq+ rights, and more, these characters live out their realities on page, as the reader watches those realities inform their game-building (and how they find refuge from said realities in gaming). I think Zevin's efforts on this front, throughout the book, are solid and thorough, if not especially groundbreaking; they affect the story as they would IRL, but are not really addressed in any way past that.    
 
Like I said, on the whole, I definitely enjoyed my time with this book. Once I started reading, I was fully invested and was always excited to pick it back up. As a person who loves the possibility in fantasy, that aspect of gaming and virtual worlds - the chance to restart or replay (which came up a few times, for different reasons, across the novel) - really spoke to me. Thematically, it was one of my favorite things. And while I came in with super high expectations because of the extreme hype, and perhaps that's why it didn't *quite* live up to what I was hoping for the novel to be, I would still, for sure, recommend it to others. 
 
“To design a game is to imagine the person who will eventually play it.” 
 
“This life is filled with inescapable moral compromises. We should do what we can to avoid the easy ones.” 
 
“Life is very long. Unless it is not.” 
 
“You aren’t just a gamer when you play anymore. You're a builder of worlds, and if you're a builder of worlds, your feelings are not as important as what your gamers are feeling. You must imagine them at all times. There is no artist more empathetic than the game designer.” 
 
“What, after all, is a video game's subtextual preoccupation if not the erasure of mortality?” 
 
“And this is the truth of any game - it can only exist in the moment that it is being played. It's the same with being an actor. In the end, all we can ever know is the game that was played, in the only world that we know.” 
 
“[…] felt a swelling of love and of worry for him - what was the difference in the end? It was never worth worrying about someone you didn't love. And it wasn't love if you didn’t worry?” 
 
“What does love even mean when you can find it with so many people and things?” 
 
“Illness could not be defeated, no matter how hard you fought, and pain, once it had you in its grasp, was transformational.” 
 
“Long relationships might be richer, but relatively brief, relatively uncomplicated encounters with interesting people could be lovely as well. Every person you knew, every person you loved even, did not have to consume you for the time to have been worthwhile.” 
 
“'What I believe to my very core,' he concluded, 'is that virtual worlds can be better than the actual world. They can be more moral, more just, more progressive, more empathetic, and more accommodating of difference. And if they can be, shouldn’t they be?'” 
 
“'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.'” 
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