A Review of Gabrielle Zevin’s Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow (Knopf, 2022)

Posted by: uttararangarajan

Written by Stephen Hong Sohn

Edited by Uttara Rangarajan  

Readers of our review will know I’m a huge fan of Gabrielle Zevin. I’ve read close to everything Zevin has published, so you know I was eventually going to get to Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow (Knopf, 2022). This book has been getting a huge buzz. I’ve just heard people talking about it, heard about people reading it, and heard people raving about it. I can see why though, the signature aspects of Zevin’s writing are all there, especially her masterful deployment of sentimentalism. The marketing description gives us this information: “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.”

 

These descriptions are always interesting because they tend to have to condense the plot and reduce the complexity of the character-system. In this case, the novel really has at least two other major characters. The first is Marx, Sam’s college roommate, who will eventually engage in a romance with Sadie, which will complicate the working relationships amongst all three characters. The other major character is Dov, the college professor, who Sadie has an affair with, and who ultimately helps push Sadie into her gaming development career.

 

What I adored about this text is that you know Zevin is a real fan of gaming, and it brought out that nostalgic streak in me. I used to game quite a bit, but as life got busy, I left all PC, handheld, and console gaming behind. I’m not surprised that Zevin ultimately focuses on the MMORPG, which is short for the massively multiplayer online role-playing game. These virtual realities were really formative for me as an escape, and Zevin really offers us a robust engagement with why the MMORPG is such an attractive alternative world. At the core of this novel, we see that the chemistry between Sadie and Sam is unique: it allows them to create games that truly become embraced by consumers. The problem is of course the various personal dynamics that continue to create friction and fissures between them, and thus sometimes get in the way of their gaming creation. The depth of their friendship, which always but never veers into romance, makes this novel particularly compelling.

 

Buy the Book Here

comments