Review: Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin

video games & the real world

I just finished reading Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin and it’s one of the best books that I’ve read all year. It’s a contemporary novel spanning the 1980’s through 2000s, as childhood best friends Sadie and Sam weave in and out of each other’s lives, playing and developing video games. Reading the book was a game in and of itself, with multiple POV’s, font and style changes, and clues throughout that referenced earlier chapters. I honestly didn’t play video games that much when I was a kid, but this book gave me a newfound appreciation for game development as an art form, a job, and a challenge. 

Zevin doesn’t shy away from topics such as race, disability, success and fame, and complicated friendships in ways that lend itself to the plot instead of overshadowing it. I found the characters to be three dimensional, their flaws and triumphs evident in the way they moved about the world. Zevin allows the characters to exist, and for us, the readers, to form our own opinions. That’s one of my favorite things in a book. One of the themes emphasized in the plot was how our own lives are not so different from video games, except in the face of mortality - we make decisions that create chain reactions of more decisions, and on the opposite end, there are an infinite number of decisions that we could have made but chose not to. I loved how it told stories of failure and success, and how both are not separate, instead they’re components that come together - you can’t have one without the other.

I read this book at a time when I felt creatively stifled, and it was comforting to read. In the novel, Sadie and Sam find themselves facing open doors and brick walls, at dead ends and crossroads. Their lives ebb and flow and veer off in different directions in the way that life does, but they inevitably always come back to one another and the thing they love most: making games and playing them.  

The nostalgia that Zevin created was also incredibly potent. I found myself longing for a time period that I never even experienced - a time where social media wasn’t prominent and technology was exciting instead of terrifying. The world that this book exists in is magical and escapist, and I loved that aspect.

At its core, the novel is a testament to friendship, and how platonic love can transcend all else in our lives. It’s a novel of creativity, decision-making, tragedy, and feeling compelled to do something meaningful. I will never forget reading it. 

FUN FACT: It’s being turned into a film by Paramount Pictures with Zevin writing the script!