Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow - Gabrielle Zevin

Author: Gabrielle Zevin

Genre: Contemporary Fiction

Rating: 4.25 stars.

In a Nutshell: A moving story of relationships. Great character development. Outstanding writing. Medium-paced. Gaming knowledge not required.

Story Synopsis:

Samson Mazer and Sadie Green first met in the hospital in 1987. One of them has a sick sister, the other is recovering from a car accident. A shared love for video games results in an unlikely friendship but a misunderstanding soon separates the friends. When they bump into each other 8 years later at a crowded train station, many things have changed but their passion for gaming hasn’t. They decide to collaborate on a new game, and with this begins a new phase of their joint story – one that will cause many ups and downs. This is a story of the worlds and connections built by Sam and Sadie, both in real life as well as in the virtual domain.

Where the book worked for me:

😍 I had been apprehensive of picking this book up because I had assumed this to be as intense as ‘Ready Player One’ when it comes to gaming knowledge. Thankfully, you don’t need to be an avid gamer to enjoy this because video games are just part of the background. There are tech terms but not so many as would overwhelm a gaming newbie.

😍 The main story is all about human connection and communication. A vast range of relationships is explored – friends, parents, grandparents, teachers, peers, colleagues, lovers (straight and queer). It is an amazing array of human associations and how this impacts our thinking and decisions.

😍 The book is medium-paced but the story is such that it keeps you hooked. It is quite intense on the emotions, quite unlike what one would expect from a book with gaming as a binding factor.

😍 The main trio – Sam, Sadie, and Sam’s best friend Marx – are complex characters and tough to slot into any predefined moulds. Each of them displays a layered personality that evolves and sometimes even devolves, throughout the story. Through them, we get to explore a wide range of emotions as well as ponder upon what we might have done in their place. The varied cultural backgrounds of the trio also helps to add some novelty to the narrative.

😍 I wasn’t a big fan of the cover art at first but the story reveals the role of the Hokusai wave in the proceedings, and also the source and significance of the title, “Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow”. I don’t want to reveal the latter here but once it came up in the book, it felt perfect!

😍 The vocabulary will be a delight to every logophile. It is not needlessly flowery or verbose, just precise to the situation. I was thanking my lucky stars I was reading this on my Kindle because I needed to use the dictionary quite often. The writing is a treat.

Where the book could have worked better for me:

☠ The final 15% drags too much. Some scenes in this segment were needlessly stretched and this brought down my overall rating.

☠ The secondary characters don’t get much attention except when they are needed in the lives of the main trio. Some of these can be excused but for some crucial people such as Sadie’s parents, their absence in the second half doesn’t make sense.

All in all, despite the clumsy finale, I enjoyed this book a lot. I didn’t feel like keeping it aside once I had started, and the characters won my heart with their realistic complexity. Definitely recommended.

My thanks to Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group and NetGalley for the DRC of “Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow”. This review is voluntary and contains my honest opinion about the book.