Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow

1.75 stars
I don't understand the hype around this book. The writing tone is inconsistent, sometimes juvenile and not in a good way. The characters, especially Sadie were extremely unlikeable, not even in a morally gray way, but in a malicious she-wanted-to-be-chased way, often with admittance that she knew all along the opposite of what she is accusing people of. She also engaged in vile actions as well. The writing was cheesy and redundant, often illogical. For ex., excessive comparisons of real life things to being a game designer, including some aspects of motherhood and how Sadie dehumanized her own child to be able to make sense that this child is their own person by comparing her to a game character. The dialogue was clunky. The ending, after 500 pages was extremely unsatisfying and dull. The writing dragged on. It was unnecessarily long.
One thing in particular I hated was the author deliberately letting 2 years pass in the narration, moving to a different set of events after those two years, not even grand events, and then filling in the gaps of those 2 years in retrospect . It was fine the first few times, but it became super annoying very fast. The ending made it feel that all that reading was severely pointless.

this was beautiful. I don’t even generally like to read fiction books and I couldn’t put this one down. Found myself reading for hours at a time, super into the story and wondering what was going to happen next. Also made me think about some things, so that’s always a plus.

What an incredible, incredible, incredible book. As someone who’s never read this style of book before I was unsure that a story about game developers would have enough to it to engage me, but I couldn’t have been more wrong. I ended up forcing myself to slow down and savor this story because i wanted to spend as much time with Sadie and Sam as possible. They are two of my favorite characters ever, the dynamic between them and the way it evolves throughout the story is what makes this book shine and the place it leaves them in I think was exactly where they were meant to be, despite all the ups and downs they faced on the journey. I also wanted to mention the NPC chapter. It was stunning and devastating, but so beautifully written. I felt like I should be in tears, and I think I would have been if I hadn’t been too busy being engrossed in the writing, specifically the way it was switching states of consciousness at all times. This became an instant classic in my mind and a book I will remember reading forever.

This Halt and Catch Fire odyssey through the 90s and 2000s gaming industry is equal parts heartwarming and heartbreaking.

Sadie and Sam met by chance and the trajectory of their lives changed forever. Their platonic friendship bordered on something more but both struggle to bring what that is into focus for the entire book.

As a gamer, the references to real games and creators a lá Ready Player One were easy to follow but Zevin is careful to prioritize and thread context with character development in her storytelling. I loved that the games Sadie and Sam created ran parallel to their relationship and mental and emotional states.

The way Zevin writes neurodivergent Sam was truly beautiful. I understood his triggers and blockers without being told. I understood how his childhood and friendship with Sadie influenced him and his art. Yet, Sam was deep and multifaceted.

Real talk though: Sadie infuriated me to no end in the second half. Her arc seems to putter to a stop and I don't feel she learns or grows from her mistakes, but I couldn't decide if it was out of egoism or self-preservation. She doesn't even apologize to Sam for the way she treated him after <spoiler> what happened to Marx. </spoiler> Sadie was a gaming Scarlet O'Hara, enduring to the point of selfishness in spite of how she used and hurt the people closest to her. <spoiler>Then, she had the gall to blame Sam for her disastrous relationship with Dov. Then she kept her ongoing thing with Dov, even after everything? And her perspective on trying not to look at Naomi because she reminded her of Marx? Naomi thing felt like a prop anyway.</spoiler> Pure cringe. I guess in that respect this book mirrors life--some people get lost in tragedy and let it frame the rest of their lives.

Overall, loved Sadie and Sam's complex relationship and even the ending, as spare as it was. I feel Sadie and Sam were both on their own healing journeys, even though I didn't feel like I saw their conclusion. Brave to end a book like that--beautifully minimalist but full of so much love as two fractured people try to move forward in the best way they can.

I am wanting to edit this review so I can focus on the issues with this book, most importantly, the problematic ones.

Throughout the book, Israel is mentioned many times and at one point the main character begins to read a book labelled
‘The founding of Israel' and I am going to explain exactly why this is problematic.

The name of the book itself is harmful and erases the true meaning of what occurred for this ‘founding'. This was the Nakba.

The Nakba was the violent displacement and the destruction of their society, culture, identity, political rights, and national aspirations. This caused the expulsion of 700,000 Palestinians and the depopulation and destruction of over 500 Palestinian villages by the zionist militias and later the Israeli army and subsequent geographical erasure, the denial of the Palestinian right of return, the creation of permanent Palestinian refugees and the “shatters of Palestinian society”.

reference: Nakba

It is now 2023 and we are witnessing the second Nakba. Survivors of the 1948 Nakba are experiencing it again and this is a direct result, again, by the Israeli army. 2 million Palestinians have been displaced, over 27,000 injured and over 12,000 have been killed (not including those who remain stuck under the rubble) and this is a number that grows every single minute, hour and day.

We are witnessing a mass genocide and ethnic cleansing.

So, yeah. ‘The founding of Israel' let's call it what it is.

An occupation over Palestine that has been going on for 75+ years.

Free Palestine.

Idk how this is a book ostensibly about what great friends these two are and the power of friendship and yada yada when these are two of the most toxic, least friendly individuals I've ever read about. Aspects of this book were really good but the two main characters were so consistently poor at communicating and just the general concept of what a friend is, but we keep getting told how important their friendship is and how they have a bond for the ages and I just absolutely don't agree. So that soured me somewhat. Very toxic portrayal of friendship from the ground up.

I also didn't like how the author had every single character talk about life as if it's a game or the things they've learned from games just because they're gamers. I'm a gamer and I have lived my whole life around gamers and at no point has any of them waxed pontific about how the decisions they make in life are vaguely game like or that you can start over in a game but you can't in life and there are save points in games but there's no save points in life and yada yada. It would be fine if this was one character's viewpoint but it's everyone, always, even in life or death situations. Just very on the nose.

But this book did get genuine emotion out of me several times and had me close to tears at one point. The writing is very good and I think I would have liked the portrayal of the main characters more if we weren't constantly told how important they were to each other, because the character voices and personalities, in isolation, were well done.

There's a rare but delightful category of great books - something like ‘Books I wouldn't necessarily want to read based on the premise, but can't put down once I start' - and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow falls squarely into it. I was inspired to read this book about 1% based on its description, 99% based on rave reviews from people I trust; I don't have much to add to their effusive commentary other than to say the hype is JUSTIFIED. I was utterly invested in the three characters, I was engrossed by the plot, and I even managed to grow curious about video games - something I genuinely never thought I'd say. I found this book fascinating, heartrending, and heartwarming, and I'll be purchasing a hard copy when it's published - this is a book that warrants at least one reread, and I can't wait to lend it out.

Thanks to NetGalley and Knopf for my ARC.

recently saw an nyt readers' choice list which put this at no. 7 and have mixed feelings about it lol. i'm a huge fan of gabrielle zevin's work and have been ever since memoirs of a teenage amnesiac (still a YA novel close to my heart) and i love game dev stories, so it was really disappointing for me to not be able to get into this one. i feel like it might partially be because it reminds me a lot of the mythic quest episode ‘a dark quiet death' which i felt explored a similar theme in a much better way!

highly recommend any of gabrielle zevin's other works still, though. still happy if this is someone's gateway to the rest of her bibliography.

I always include major spoilers (hidden), to help with my memory  issues. Read them at your peril! 

I don't have a good explanation, I was just really bored from quite early on. These notes are for my own use.

Sadie, girl  visiting her sick sister in hospital, meets badly injured boy, Sam,  gaming on his own. She is the first person he has opened up to since His mother was killed in the car crash that almost destroyed his foot. They don't meet again until they are both students at MIT because she was claiming the hours with him as credits towards her bat mitzvah, and he feels betrayed. Eventually, they create a game together which is about a 3 year old who gets swept away to sea and takes 7 years to get home again. They use a gaming engine written by Dov ,the married ex professor and on/off lover of Sadie. They are also helped by Sam's kind college room mate Marx who will go on to father Sadie's child and die in tragic circumstances that I didn't get to, just flipped forward to see what happened  

Dysentery is better than this book.

I will not be continuing to read this book. I reached page 44 before having enough. Upon realising there was a zionist inspired character in this I decided to read more into the controversies in the book. There was so much more to this author such as being in conversation with the Hadassah, The Women's Zionist Organisation of America. As well as not crediting the work of a game programmer and completely disregarding them. This book within the first 44 pages completely glorified everything that was wrong in the world and all the reviews I have seen do not bring any of this up and I wish these looked past the words they see on a page. It's so much bigger than a game inspired by WW2 where people can be labeled as Nazi's, a guy wanting American born Jews to know about the true history of Israel. These are the authors opinions in written form, this is a projection of what she believes and I will not have any part in deluding myself into thinking that they are just words on a page.

While I got this from a podcast recommendation (Thanks Triple Click) I initially wondered what it had to do with computer games. Then the games and lifelong love stories kicked in and I couldn't stop. The characters are incredible and loveable, even the ones I hated. 

Lost interest. Found the book very slow-moving. Stopped on page 127.

Definitely a little wooden at the start. Heavy on the narration rather than the showing. But these characters are really well done, and it was a treat to be a part of their relationships

This one just wasnt for me. I was bummed cause i love a good book about creating video games etc and the book slay by morris was absolutely fantastic along with ready player one and ready player two. But this one just hit too many real world issues and i really needed an escape from those issues for a hot minute. I am glad there is something to talk about these topics but it was just not great timing for me on this one i suppose

There is concept in game, and general UI design, called “persistence” - the ability for a program or a game to “remember” a previous input, or for something to “remain” in the same state regardless of other events.

“Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow” speaks mainly, to me, about the question of persistence, and the existential fear of knowing that the one thing about life is that life does not persist. Unlike in games, you can't save and start again.

This book is heartbreaking, and so very very vivid. Something that I know has left an indelibe, persistent mark on me.

We can start on a positive note, I thank the stars, the universe, and the damn galaxy that Sadie and Sam did not end up together. It confuses me why they kept on insisting they were friends when they felt more like co-workers. It confused me more how they had this “thing” where they could never date because they have a special work relationship, but they barely demonstrated that. All they did after Ichigo was disagree on 90% of things. I’m pretty sure Sadie disagreed more with Sam than Dov, and that says a lot. Another positive is everything before the launch of Ichigo, everything else was frustrating.

Despite this book being 400 pages, somehow the ending felt rushed and unsatisfying, especially on the character development. I specifically want to talk about how unfair the writing seemed to Sam and Sadie, with heavy emphasis on Sadie, because they did her dirty.

I felt a sort of preference from the author’s end for Sam’s characterization, because yes, even if you put a character through hell you can still tell when more thought was put into them than other characters. I felt that the whole time I read Sam’s chapters and even approaching the end I felt he had the better end of the stick. Chapters would be dedicated to giving his backstory with Anna, we stopped for paragraphs to know about his background, he was the kid with the accident, poor financial stability, later amputee and then there’s Sadie. Even the own story expressed how Sam is more likable, maybe you were intentionally supposed to like Sam more than Sadie which f that were the case I would have preferred not having chapters with Sadie because I hate how things went for her.

Surprisingly I like Sadie, sometimes this book was doing the impossible to make you dislike her, especially with the Marx plot line. I felt that every chapter with Sadie could only exist if it related to a love aspect. If it wasn’t Sam, it was Dov, if it wasn’t Dov it was Marx, and if you think it’s about no one, well actually, it’s about Sam. Even her pregnancy didn’t feel like it was about her, it was about Sam and how he needed her to finish the game. After Marx’s death you don’t get much of Sadie if it isn’t through Sam, and that feels dirty. I’m not going to talk about Dov because she glosses over him straight to a more amicable relationship and I don’t know how to feel about that at this moment, which feels like another thing that was supposed to make you dislike her. Sadly, for me to talk more about Sadie, I need to talk about Marx.

The moment he died, I rolled my eyes. Marx was used as shock value, that is disappointing. I am still trying to figure out why his death was necessary, the only reason cannot be “because Sadie needed to grieve” she had a sick sister, you couldn’t work something around that? I don’t understand why make her pregnant and then kill the father, all these plot points are happening near the end of the book, and it felt like Sadie could not catch a break. You had 400 pages to work around that, and you did it after 250 pages of making her have a love interest, again, for the third time. Did Marx die for Sam to swoop in and claim the love of her life? No, and that would have been stupid to do, but it’s worth mentioning. Did he die to show how valuable he was to the company? Not really because Sam did swoop in and not only did they not go bankrupt, but the game went well. Did Sadie get any development from Marx’s death? Well, she became depressed, she finished her work before giving birth and had postpartum depression on top of the already existing depression. Did it bring Sam and Sadie closer? No, Sam didn’t see Sadie for five years. And to top it all off, Sadie’s ending. She decides to take up Dov’s offer in giving classes while he’s gone. I know I said I would gloss over him, but man is it hard to not feel disappointed with that ending for her.

this was a good book, i can’t lie. definitely did cry at part 7. but that was the only time i cried, dunno why everyone else was crying at the end… overall, a decent book

It was too beautiful.

I wasn't sure I was going to like this book. Once I started I couldn't put it down! It was beautiful, sad, relatable and moving. I bought in on the rollercoaster this book was taking me on and let myself really feel for the characters as they went through a journey of discovery completely dissimilar to my own but somehow very similar. The writing was just spectacular for me and I couldn't recommend this book MORE.

Gabrielle Zevin's “Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow” attempts to delve into the complexities of friendship and trust through the story of Sam and Sadie, two young video game developers. Unfortunately, the book largely misses the mark, with their relationship becoming a hotbed of constant misunderstanding. This lack of believable progression hampers the narrative, making it difficult for the reader to become emotionally invested in their journey.

Adding to the novel's issues are a number of questionable stylistic choices. Avoiding spoilers, there are a couple of sections in the book where stylistic choices were made that come off as awkward and distracting, doing more harm to the narrative than good.

In conclusion, “Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow” struggles to connect with its readers due to its underdeveloped characters and weak narrative choices. While the novel explores the relationship between personal connections and creativity, its execution leaves much to be desired

Longest. Situationship. Ever.

ALSO NO SANE GIRL IS GOING BACK TO THEIR WEIRD EX WHO PREYED ON THEM AND ABUSED THEM?? Then again, I don’t think there is much sane about Sadie Green.

This book likely wont be everyone's favorite - but it definitely was one of mine. I loved the three main characters and the varied relationships they had amongst one another, and I loved the creative process that was explored as they made the games. I'll admit that what pushed me to five stars was a lot of tug-on-the-heart-strings moments that hit home for me personally and may not for others, but I love a book that gets me emotionally invested in the story and this was certainly that.

4.5

Favourite Quotes (spoil free)

"Why wouldn't you tell someone you loved them? Once you loved someone, you repeated it until they were tired of hearing it. You said it until it ceased to have meaning. Why not not course, you goddamn did."

"She had once read in a book about consciousness that over the years, the human brain makes an AI version of your loved ones."

"As Sadie spoke, Sam was reminded of a winter afternoon, many years ago, and of commuters clogging up the train station, blocking his path. At the time, they'd seemed like impediments to him, but maybe he'd been thinking of them the wrong way. What makes a person want to shiver in a train station for nothing more than the promise of a secret image? But then, what makes a person drive down an unmarked road in the middle of the night? Maybe it was the willingness to play that hinted at a tender, eternally newborn part in all humans. Maybe it was the willingness to play that kept one from despair."