At its heart, Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow is a story about two people who are friends, partners, allies, and collaborators – but never quite lovers, even when they should be.
Sadie and Sam meet as children in a hospital. Sam has been admitted for a foot injury; Sadie is visiting her sick sister. They hit it off instantly, becoming very close friends. Sadie’s initial motivation to keep visiting Sam is her community service project but with time, she simply enjoys his company. When Sam discovers this, he breaks off all ties with her. Sadie is heartbroken. They never meet again.
Years later, Sam spots Sadie on a sidewalk in New York City, and they begin talking again. What follows is a collaboration; they create a video game together, and with the help of Sam’s flatmate’s friend Marx (who becomes the game’s producer), the three of them ride the success of an instant hit and go on to found a gaming company called Unfair Games.
Gabrielle Zevin’s novel is very much about video games and about the merging of the virtual and the actual. These two worlds keep colliding, sending the characters’ lives into a topsy-turvy spin with each collision.
Sam and Sadie, though deeply in love with each other, are never lovers. They depend on each other for survival, yet never fully accept, not even to themselves, the importance the other holds in their life. It is one of the book’s most quietly devastating qualities.
I’ll be honest: I have little interest in video games. I am firmly a Farmville person (someone please bring it back). And yet, this book about video games never once bored me. The story is well-formed and the human emotions at its centre are universal enough to transcend any lack of familiarity with the gaming world.
That said, the book could have been maybe 50 pages shorter. All in all though, it is interesting and very much enjoyable.
The title comes from a quote in Shakespeare’s Macbeth, the same quote that is Marx’s favourite, in which Macbeth says that in the end, everything is meaningless, because with each tomorrow we inch closer towards our graves. The novel leans into this fatality: the futility of all that we do in our lives, and the fact that death ultimately takes it all away.
It is a melancholic undercurrent beneath a story that is, on the surface, about creativity and friendship. And that tension is precisely what makes it linger.
My rating: 3.9/5
Have you read Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow? I’d love to know your thoughts in the comments below.
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