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Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow
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Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow
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Bretnie
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rated it 5 stars
Dec 19, 2022 08:51AM
Space to discuss the TOB contender Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin.
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I really enjoyed it. It got my zombie vote back in December.
I was unsure about this one going in, because of my lack of interest in video games, but I'm glad I gave it a chance. I love stories that focus on platonic friendships, and I learned so much about the extensive work and creativity that goes into creating games. This book has already been named the Book of the Year from BOTM, and the Goodreads Choice Awards Winner, and it's possible it could claim the Rooster as well!
I'm going to be a dissenting voice here, I guess. I had just finished =Young Jane Young= as the long list came out, and really enjoyed it. So I was rooting for this one to make the short list. But I ended up doing the DNF.Particularly as I was just coming off the McCarthy, the prose seemed really flat, and everything seemed so over-explained. I felt more like Zevin was telling me about the book she was going to write.
Instead of watching the charity/friend thing play out organically, we get it explained to us, step by step, because she can't trust us to figure it out ourselves. And, I don't know, for as far as I got, the plot had all the nuance of an after-school special. Reading it was bringing out the inner Crispin in me.
Tim wrote: "I'm going to be a dissenting voice here, I guess. I had just finished =Young Jane Young= as the long list came out, and really enjoyed it. So I was rooting for this one to make the short list. But ..."Zevin is also a YA writer, so I definitely got some of that flavor here. And it did feel flat to me at first, around 3 stars till I got to a certain section about 2/3 of the way through, which just blew me away. Now, many months later, it's diminished in my mind a bit, but I did still like it. It gave me the sweetness and emotion I needed at the time. And I'm also not a gamer, but I found the intricacies of game development, especially the storytelling aspects, fascinating.
I felt the same. I liked it, didn't love it.
I also found this book disappointing. Yes, for the over-explaining, but also it was very tiresome that one of them would refuse to speak to the other for years over something they could have just talked out, and this trope was repeated over & over. That's just lazy sitcom plotting. I was expecting a story about friendship, but I wasn't convinced that these characters were actually friends.
Karen wrote: "...."So I've been debating all day about responding to this. Because in this particular instance, while "trope" is not being used properly to mean "figure of speech," it's also not quite stepping into "topos" territory. "...refuse to speak to the other for years over something they could have just talked out," I don't know - that seems more like a narrative strategy than a commonplace or a motif. Maybe I'm parsing too closely, but that's what happens once you let words go unmoored from their meanings and drifting about banging into each other. Confusion. Cacophony. Madness.
Karen wrote: "That's just lazy sitcom plotting..."Well, the title gives it away: three's company....
I’m also in the like it, didn’t love it camp. The characters didn’t really move me and the author wasn’t doing anything unusually creative here. I keep thinking about Babel, how hard that must have been to write and my admiration for it grows daily.
I think the order you read TOB books can influence how you like books. I really liked this when I read it, I still do. Others I'd put ahead of it now.
I've been avoiding this thread because I loved the book so much that I'm not ready for people to not like it. But I appreciate why others didn't love it, so I'm glad I read the thread so far, but I might have to brace myself for the full TOB discussions..
Anyone do the audio version? The print has a much longer hold queue at my library, but the audio is available much sooner.
Nadine in California wrote: "Anyone do the audio version? The print has a much longer hold queue at my library, but the audio is available much sooner."I did audio for the same reason, and because I like using audio for stories I know will be easier to follow, and it was fine. I just didn't love the female narrator, she was pretty monotone through much of it.
I’m in the ‘in love with it’ camp for this novel. It’s so full of sincerity and heart that I forgave every bit of the places where my attention flagged or the prose drooped.
As someone who very often listens to audiobook while playing video games after kids go to bed, this was a real worlds colliding book. There was no flagging attention, but it probably helped that I had a fairly deep knowledge of all the video game references and touchstones.I think the part about the characters just needing to talk to each other felt more believable with the scope of how bad video game "crunch" can be. When you are working the long hours typically associated with getting a video game out, personal life is out the window. A very interesting book on the creation of video games that has come out recently is Blood, Sweat, and Pixels: The Triumphant, Turbulent Stories Behind How Video Games Are Made. A very, very different book. But if you enjoyed this and wanted more video games then something worth checking out.
Kip wrote: "As someone who very often listens to audiobook while playing video games after kids go to bed, this was a real worlds colliding book. There was no flagging attention, but it probably helped that I ..."I'm not a videogamer, nor have I yet read T3, but this aspect of the novel as you've just described it immediately calls to mind The Nix -- a flawed but fabulous novel that I think was in this tournament before I participated in it. Now I am looking forward to this book even more!
Risa wrote: "I'm not a videogamer, nor have I yet read T3, but this aspect of the novel as you've just described it immediately calls to mind The Nix -- a flawed but fabulous novel..."Me neither, but I think the videogamer story within The Nix was fantastic. I loved this big, shaggy book that wears its heart on its sleeve. I almost DNF'ed it because it was hard for me to bear the sad-sackness of the main character as a child, but luckily I kept going.
Nadine in California wrote: "Anyone do the audio version? The print has a much longer hold queue at my library, but the audio is available much sooner."I really enjoyed the audio.
While I'm not a gamer or game designer, in another life I worked in advertising and when pitching it's an all hands on deck all the time situation so that felt familiar.
I'm also with Lark, I just love it.
Thanks all for the comments on the audio. I'm looking forward to it!
Risa wrote: " it immediately calls to mind The Nix."Immediately glances over at paperback version of The Nix that has been staring at me forlornly from my TBR bookshelf for years.
The Nix is a somewhat-flawed but still really, really good book, IMO. Like, there were moments that I felt didn't 100% hit, but the whole was still so very good.There are rumors of his second novel coming out in 2023.
Yep, the new Nathan Hill is called 'Wellness'! September! I also haven't read The Nix yet! It is also long! I am not overwhelmed with books AT ALL!!!
C wrote: "Yep, the new Nathan Hill is called 'Wellness'! September! I also haven't read The Nix yet! It is also long! I am not overwhelmed with books AT ALL!!!"Oh gosh, I'm so excited about this! The Nix just swept me away, it was so rich, and so funny, such an absorbing read. (I actually put off reading the last chapter of The Nix because I loved it so much and didn't want it to end. Although I only remembered a month later that I'd forgotten and needed to get back to it, ha.)
Elizabeth wrote: "C wrote: "Yep, the new Nathan Hill is called 'Wellness'! September! I also haven't read The Nix yet! It is also long! I am not overwhelmed with books AT ALL!!!"Oh gosh, I'm so excited about this!..."
Oh goodie, I'm glad it is another something for you to look forward to, Elizabeth! Also hoping you like 'Seven Moons'. Wishing you the best health!
As I said earlier, I liked this book a lot. I read it way back in July of last year, and it remains pretty fresh in my memory still. It got my zombie vote in December, over the other eight I had read at that time. And I think it might still get my zombie vote today, having completed all of them (although admittedly there are a couple others I liked equally as much).For those of you reading this thread who have not yet read the book, LOOK AWAY -- what follows contains spoilers.
I like Zevin's writing style, and I think it worked well in telling this story that required moving three main characters through decades of their lives, both apart and together, while also fully describing the visual medium of video-gaming and its business aspects. I read & enjoy a goodly amount of children's and YA books, so perhaps I just like a straight-forward method of telling a story, and I don't mind if an author occasionally does me the favor of defining a term or person that might not be known to every reader. Don't get me wrong -- I also enjoy a book that sends my brain on a scavenger hunt to learn more about a topic, like the physics I went to learn on the side while reading The Passenger or the Sri Lankan history I studied up on while reading The Seven Moons ..., but I don't think every novel has to do that.
I was a little surprised at how much I enjoyed this novel, because angsty young adults and video-games are not usually my happy place. But I found there to be so much more going on in this novel, which struck me as deep & complex and stirred up a lot of emotions in me.
I thought the novel was structurally innovative, in the way that it included several of the video-games themselves within it. I could "see" and "feel" the experience of playing "Emily Blaster" or "Both Sides" or "Ichigo." And gosh, Zevin had to first come up with the concepts & content & process for these games, before she could include them in this novel.
The characters and their relationships to each other felt vividly realistic to me.
First off, the three main characters are all descendants of immigrants in one form or another: Sadie with wealthy Jewish parents; Sam with a Jewish father and Korean-American mother, and his Korean immigrant-to-America grandparents; and Marx with his American-born Korean mother and his Japanese father. And this allowed the story to naturally contain so many aspects of immigrant culture and race and class. And it gave Sam the authority, in the story, to express strong opinions about cultural appropriation when he is asked about it by an interviewer, saying:
"The alternative to appropriation is a world where white European people make art about white European people, with only white European references in it. Swap African or Asian or Latin or whatever culture you want for European. A world where everyone is blind and deaf to any culture or experience that is not their own. I hate that world, don't you? I'm terrified of that world, and I don't want to live in that world, and as a mixed-race person, I literally don't exist in it. My dad, who I barely knew, was Jewish. My mom was an American-born Korean. I was raised by Korean immigrant grandparents in Koreatown, Los Angeles. And as any mixed-race person will tell you -- to be half of two things is to be whole of nothing. And, by the way, I don't own or have a particularly rich understanding of the references of Jewishness or Koreanness because I happen to be those things. But if Ichigo had been fucking Korean, it wouldn't be a problem for you, I guess?"
A reader can agree or disagree with those views, but they are certainly thought-provoking. And Zevin knows of what she speaks, out of her own cultural heritage.
That Sam and Sadie and Marx fell in and out of relationship with each other made total sense to me, both in the context of their characters and in the context of real world life as I have experienced it. I got angry at them sometimes, wanting to say to them "Hey, you're overreacting" or "you're misunderstanding," but that happens with people -- sometimes they overreact or misunderstand or hold a grudge. These characters were flawed, which made them very real to me, because human beings are flawed.
While not a gamer myself, my children definitely grew up (and my grandchildren are growing up now) in a world dense with video games. And this story hits all the nostalgic notes of video-games of the 80s and 90s that I watched my kids grow up with: PacMan, Donkey Kong, The Oregon Trail, Dungeons & Dragons, Mario Bros.
I found this novel to be joyful in the passion of making art in so many forms: creative writing, music, fabric, acting, games, architecture. There is Shakespeare, and Emily Dickinson, and Escher, and Katsushika Oi.
At the same time, Zevin took what could have in other hands been a frivolous tale of the spats of young adults working in entertainment, and gave us a deep look into a time and an industry in America that was [?is?] openly xenophobic, misogynistic, and highly competitive. The story doesn't shirk from looking hard things in the eye, facing random shootings, amputation, childhood cancer, abortion, S&M, drugs, accidental death and suicide, and bigotry in all its nasty forms.
I'm sure this novel (like all novels) is not for every reader. But it sure was the novel for me. If you are and have always been a math computer gamer engineering geek, I think you'll feel like you've stepped into your tribe. If you are a woman who has ever strived in a predominantly male environment, I think you'll nod your head in remembrance of your experiences. But mostly if you have ever cared passionately about anything and failed and failed better the next time, I think you'll be feeling all the feels throughout this story.
Yes to all you wrote, Phyllis. Especially the "joy" part.I wrote in my review that I haven't cared so much about the fictional people in a book since I read Three Junes 20 years ago.
I don't know why but it feels like Emily St. John Mandel should be able to do the same thing, that she should be the master of making me care about her fictional characters--but in her case I can see the artifice. I think she's actually a better writer or at least a more consistent writer but her writing is so polished and perfect that the language pulls me out of the story. Gabrielle Zevin's writing is kind of clunky sometimes. I could have done without the entire Pilgrim chapter. But it is such sincere writing. I cared about these people intensely.
I liked it! Phew! The first ToB book I've liked this year. I was getting worried. People in the Mercury Pictures thread were comparing that book to Kavalier and Clay, but this one reminded me much more of it -- also, The Animators (although I liked Tx3 much better), and, oddly, A Little Life and even The Time Traveler's Wife, a bit -- something in the tone.
As I said in my review, and I didn't love it -- but I liked it a lot, and I had not been a fan of A,J. Fikry -- too "quirky" and sweet for me. This was definitely more for me.
T&T&T does a good job of following a creative partnership through its ups and downs; MPP talks about exiled creatives during WWII. They both have a lot in similar with Kav and Clay... which is probably why I liked them both so much.
Kyle wrote: "The Nix is a somewhat-flawed but still really, really good book, IMO. Like, there were moments that I felt didn't 100% hit, but the whole was still so very good.There are rumors of his second nove..." Oohhh, I really enjoyed The Nix but plum forgot about it. Great connection.
Ellen wrote: "As I said in my review, and I didn't love it -- but I liked it a lot, and I had not been a fan of A,J. Fikry -- too "quirky" and sweet for me. This was definitely more for me..."I had the same reaction to Fikry and automatically wrote Tomorrow off, but all the positive comments have put it back on my TBR. It's a race to see which format arrives from my library first - audio or print.
Ellen wrote: "I liked it! Phew! The first ToB book I've liked this year. I was getting worried. People in the Mercury Pictures thread were comparing that book to Kavalier and Clay, but this one reminded me muc..."
Oh goodie! I'm glad you liked Tx3, Ellen! In my head, it's already on the shelf next to The Animators, which I loved. So I'm looking forward to Tx3. :D
I liked this book and also connected it in my mind to The Animators. I wouldn’t go so far as the comparison to Kavalier & Clay, though, because K&C is perfect on a sentence level as well as the story level. I think T&T&T struggles on the sentence level (not the most polished writing). I did love the parts about the creative process. I ended up loving the first half (basically all the way up to the first big success), and the book became so much more repetitive and less focused after that. I would probably go with 5 stars for the first half and 2 stars for the second, for an average rating of 3.5, which isn’t too bad for me.
My favorite chapter and my least-liked chapter were one after another, both in the final section of the book. It gave me the feeling that Zevin likes to try new things and sometimes they work beautifully.
Kyle wrote: "The Nix is a somewhat-flawed but still really, really good book, IMO. Like, there were moments that I felt didn't 100% hit, but the whole was still so very good.There are rumors of his second nove..."
Exactly how I felt about it. It has a tender place in my heart, and I am SO excited to hear that he has a second novel coming out. I worried that he'd put every thought he'd ever had into The Nix. :-)
I think that's a very astute observation, Lark.C - the eagle has flown!
Did any of you have any video games that came to mind while reading/listening? I've played few video games but recently T3 really reminded me of Unravel Two which I played cooperatively with my son: https://www.ea.com/games/unravel/unra.... You play as two little yarn people that are connected by a thread of yarn and you make your way across a crumbling landscape (sometimes it's on fire) by solving puzzles, using yarn and physics. The story is kind of in the background to the puzzling but still a great game.Another pair of games it reminded of me is the Ori games--story is forefront in these two, you play as a little rabbit-like creature trying to save the land and get back to his adoptive family. It's a beautiful game, lots of cut scenes, there's fighting, puzzling, some mazes, but its all in service of the plot: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cklw-...
I have never played a video game in my life, but my son (35) played Oregon Trail and its ... sequel? counterpart? Amazon Trail obsessively, way back when. I can still hear the music in my head.I marveled at how, even though this was a world and a forum about which I had zero interest, the passages that were totally game-related were not overwhelmingly tedious. My guess is that they had something for actual gamers in addition to not being too overwhelming or tedious for us total non-gamers.
Bob wrote: "Did any of you have any video games that came to mind while reading/listening?"Solution, reminded me immediately of Papers, Please! Another game about being a cog in a totalitarian regime which is also quite thoughtful.
Their big hit game definitely gave strong Ori vibes but with a bit of Celeste thrown in there as well with the fact that real-life issues are being heavily touched upon.
Maple Town and Pioneers gave me strong vibes of Stardew Valley and I think more, obviously, Animal Crossing. Where you are building your own separate world and also going on ridiculous fetch quests with a nightly mini-game happening at the ophthalmologist's house.
I had to DNF very early on in Chapter 2. I know that isn't giving the book a fair shot, but the narrative voice has the same twee-ish cast that doomed Fikry for me. This shortlist has been surprisingly DNF-heavy for me. I have two titles left to read, Babel and Seven Moons. The only book I liked without reservation is Sea of Tranquility.
Nadine in California wrote: "I had to DNF very early on in Chapter 2. I know that isn't giving the book a fair shot, but the narrative voice has the same twee-ish cast that doomed Fikry for me. ..."Interesting. I remember the first chapters were a little roughly written but instead of "twee" I thought "sweet" and kept going, even though my twee meter is pretty sensitive, usually. I kept making excuses for this book because I loved it, maybe irrationally.
Nadine in California wrote: "I had to DNF very early on in Chapter 2. I know that isn't giving the book a fair shot, but the narrative voice has the same twee-ish cast that doomed Fikry for me. This shortlist has been surpri..."
I haven't DNFed any, but I've had some major eye rolling. I'm just not that interested in men doing stupid shit.
Audra wrote: "I'm just not that interested in men doing stupid shit..."Well, that's going to rule out a lot!
Lark wrote: "Nadine in California wrote: "I had to DNF very early on in Chapter 2. I know that isn't giving the book a fair shot, but the narrative voice has the same twee-ish cast that doomed Fikry for me. ......"My twee meter can be so random. There've been books that could have been twee, but worked for me, but of course I can't think of their titles now. The closest thing now is the PBS series 'All Creatures Great and Small' which I watch with a joyful heart while my husband rolls his eyes.
Nadine I did feel like I had to forgive a lot but then I was rewarded. There are two chapters near the end of the book, one from the perspective of a dying person that I thought was magnificently written, the best of the book, and one that is an extended love-letter in the guise of a video game that was completely boring, self-indulgent, and unnecessary. But even this juxtaposition of success and failure within the covers of this book made me like it more because Zevin felt like she was trying stuff and some of it worked and some of it didn't and she was ok with that. Maybe she fell in love with her own characters a little too much, and that's what caused her to lean twee, though.
Tim wrote: "Audra wrote: "I'm just not that interested in men doing stupid shit..."Well, that's going to rule out a lot!"
I know, I can get it in everyday life, I want something different in my books!
Good for the ToB in getting me to read something I usually wouldn't, but also I am just not the audience for all that unnecessary angst. Just sit down over a couple of Frappuccinos, people! Talk to each other! I want more complexity from the novels I read, more nuance. I liked Marx, but he was a caricature of a perfect friend. And the way that Sam and Sadie simply checked out of each other's lives at the least sign of trouble meant that instead of conflict, what we got was two people contemplating their feelings. So much less interesting.
That said, I did let my 19 year old son know he might like this book.
I am reading it now, and though I am only 1/4 of the way through it, so far I find it delightful and engaging. "Just talk to each other" is the kind of advice that one gives when one is outside the situation, and when one has the benefit of having already committed this sort of error when one was the age of these characters. These are two people who have many strengths and gifts, and also (as we all do) some serious blind spots. The author has already told us that they were both social outsiders growing up, so ... where would they have gained the social intelligence that would have minimized or obviated the conflict at the heart of the story?
Perhaps because I am the parent of a young adult on the autism spectrum, I am less inclined to dismiss or judge these particular foibles. I have a soft spot in my heart already for Sadie and Sam. It's possible that by the end of the novel this will have faded/worn thin for me, but ... I hope not.
Risa wrote: ""Just talk to each other" is the kind of advice that one gives when one is outside the situation, and when one has the benefit of having already committed this sort of error when one was the age of these characters...."Sure, I agree with you that this is a common human reaction. But it makes the novel much less interesting that it otherwise might be, especially since the trait is shared by both main characters.
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