Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow Review (Spoiler Free)

-
Gabrielle Zevin’s novel ‘Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow’ has been on my radar for a while, but I was never able to actually find it in the bookstores, probably owing to a huge popularity and the awards it has received. Finally, I used my kindle earlier this month to read it and I was not disappointed at all. While I did not vote for this novel on Goodreads for best fiction in 2022 and have read novels I preferred, this did live up to my admittedly high expectations.
The novel follows two friends, Sadie and Sam from the start of their friendship throughout their joint career of making video games and developing personal relationships with each other and other people coming in and out of their life. It is told through third person narration, which I was worried would come across as impersonal, it was far from it and I found it quite successful. This approach also allowed the author to be experimental with the form and the voice, like an entire chapter told from a perspective of a bird or from within the video game. From a technical point of view, ‘Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow’ covers a huge space of time, around thirty years and the author manages to always keep this passage of time in mind and leave consistent narrative to allow the reader to always know where they are in the story.
The characters in the novel are probably my favorite part. When I heard this is about a boy and a girl making a video game, I expected a completely different novel, where the biggest part of the story will happen within a virtual world. However, that was not the case at all. While the video game creation is a huge part of their life, it was more focused on pretty much any creative pursuits and the difficulties that come with that line of work. Their relationship, while at times painfully frustrating due to their consistent inability to communicate to each other (eat your heart out, Sally Rooney), felt real. I could imagine having Sadie and Sam with all their vices and virtues in my environment. Other side characters were given time to breathe and to develop as well, both in relation to the protagonist couple and independently. They are all complicated, flawed , but also incredibly lovable and life-like. I really enjoyed reading about all of them and I found myself truly caring about their faiths by the end of the novel. 




















I must say that a huge part of the relationship between Sadie and Sam is their love for video games. They not only make, but breathe and live video games. I am not a huge gamer, but I can appreciate the amount of work and dedication it takes to actually make a good and successful video game, so I enjoyed that aspect. While this story would not be the same if the couple was say…writing a book or producing a music album, this idea of two friends making something creative, being successful at it and all the trials and tribulations that come with it strongly resonated with me in this novel. I never played Oregon Trail or any of the Mario games, but the author dedicates the time to show us why it mattered to the characters and I started caring about them too.
If you are interested in reading this novel, I believe there are a few things to keep in mind. First, there are some scenes of gun violence that are not explicitly written about, but given the state of the world, might be something you don’t want to read about. Additionally, Zevin through her characters does not shy away from the political points, often leaning quite liberal. In the online game the Sadie and Sam’s company created, they have allowed their same sex players to get married, long before that was even allowed in real life. Finally, there is a frequent depiction of disability of one of the main characters as well as heart wrenching descriptions of phantom pain that happens to amputees. I think that the way Zevin wrote about all of these shows an immense amount of research and care put into it, but I am not an expert on any of these topics, so I can’t be the one to make the decision of how successful it was. I will leave that up to you.
Overall, I rated this ⅘ as I truly enjoyed it. Did you read this novel? Did you read any other novels by Zevin? What did you rate it? Let me know!












source:goodreads.com

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Wild and Wicked Things Review

-
Image
  ‘Wild and Wicked Things’ is imagined as a sapphic retelling of ‘The Great Gatsby’ , set in the jazz age with a sprinkle of magic and historical fiction. What’s not to like? Unfortunately, while  ‘The Great Gatsby’ will remain etched into the American and world literature, not because of the glitz and glam of the age, but because of the criticism of it, I am afraid that ‘Wild and Wicked Things’ has not even gotten close to the level needed for that kind of veneration. The story follows Annie, a naive young woman, who came to Crow Island, a place filled with magic and mystery to settle her father’s estate. However, as she moves about, she gets intertwined with the forbidden magic and meets Emeline, the local witch. This, in combination with the idea that all of this is set post WWI in which magic is very much real but forbidden drew my attention. I really wanted to like it, but the author did so little in so many pages I found myself skimming through so many pages of Annie’s q...
Read more

Severance Review

-
Image
This book has been on my TBR for this year since the start of the year and as we are nearing the end of 2024, I decided it was finally time. Perhaps, the fact I did not check the novel summary before reading it influenced my experience reading it, as I was not in the mood for the post apocalyptic novel where the end of the world has been caused by a disease. Fair or not, I did not enjoy this novel at all, as I found it rather dull and uninspiring, leaving a lot to be desired. Unfortunately, it was another case of a somewhat interesting idea done not so well. The main character and the narrator is a young woman of Chinese heritage, Candace Chen, living in New York city. The narration is split between the now where the world has already ended and the past. In the new, Candace joins a group of survivors, who are all led by Bob as they try to make it to ‘The Facility’, scavenging for what they need along the way while her past is showing her mostly dull daily routines until the two timel...
Read more

Fourth Wing Review

-
Image
  For a while, it was impossible to exist in any of the book review spaces on the internet without someone bringing up this book and praising it intensely. However, a few of my friends whose opinion I cherish have read it, and hated it. This is also the story of how I ended up adding it to my goodreads want to read list that my husband stalked in order to buy me books for my birthday. Since I had a physical copy, courtesy of my amazing husband (love you very much) I decided to see this for myself. This is just as much of a train wreck as I expected it to be. The premise of the novel is that we follow Violet (or Violence as her enemy-to-lovers guy insists on calling her) who was supposed to be studying to be a squire get thrown into school where they will learn how to become riders or die trying. Violet has no personality beyond being small, not like other girls, has silver hair (how many times can an author remind us how special Violet is because of this) and horny to all hell. The...
Read more