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

emotional hopeful reflective
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow is not just a book for gamers. While it gives the non-gamer a beginner-level peek into the world of video games, it is most of all a story of love and friendship that, in a way, challenges the definition of friendship by recognizing the almost indescribable nature of some relationships. 
“...but ‘friend’ was a broad category, wasn’t it? ‘Friend’ was a word that was overused to the point that it had no meaning at all.”

Although described as being “about two childhood friends, once estranged,” this book has three main characters. The friendship between Sam and Sadie is where it begins, but Max is far too important to each of their stories to be left out. In fact, the story is alternately told from all three of their perspectives.

This novel challenges us to love all of the layers of a person:
“It was easy to dislike the man; it was harder to dislike the little boy who existed just beneath the surface of the man.”
“The best colors of Sadie Green are not her darkness.”

And describes to us the beauty and benefit of failure:
“The fabric is not just a fabric. It’s the story of failure and perseverance, of the discipline of a craftsman, of the life of an artist.”

Several current topics of importance such as race, gender, sexual preference, gay marriage, relationship violence, and disability are woven into the story, both in the real and gaming worlds. Sadie struggles throughout the story with the recognition of her work within the male-dominated gaming world, among other women’s issues. Sam and Max are both from multi-racial families and we learn how this affects them throughout their lives.

During the years we spend with Sam, Sadie, and Max we see that, alongside their personal struggles, friendship and love make their world much richer which, in turn, allows them to see, do, and experience more than they ever imagined.
“What is love, in the end? …Except the irrational desire to put evolutionary competitiveness aside in order to ease someone else’s journey through life?”

I was delighted by Zevin’s writing style - not only the sentence structure, but the word choices that challenged me to learn more. Susurrus, izakaya, or Torschlusspanik, anyone? Zevin’s work is full of unusual and beautiful metaphors beyond comparisons to gaming, (“... a mortifyingly psychosomatic weathervane…”), humor of all flavors (“...you, like most humans, have redundancies built in. Your pancreas is, heartbreakingly, single.”), and references to visual art, literature, theatre, music, geography, and more. It is both broad and deep, joyful and heartbreaking, and beautifully weaves the fantasy world into the real world. 
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