“Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow”, Gabrielle Zevin
Published July 5, 2022
In this exhilarating novel, two friends—often in love, but never lovers—come together as creative partners in the world of video game design, where success brings them fame, joy, tragedy, duplicity, and, ultimately, a kind of immortality.
On a bitter-cold day, in the December of his junior year at Harvard, Sam Masur exits a subway car and sees, amid the hordes of people waiting on the platform, Sadie Green. He calls her name. For a moment, she pretends she hasn't heard him, but then, she turns, and a game begins: a legendary collaboration that will launch them to stardom. These friends, intimates since childhood, borrow money, beg favors, and, before even graduating college, they have created their first blockbuster, Ichigo. Overnight, the world is theirs. Not even twenty-five years old, Sam and Sadie are brilliant, successful, and rich, but these qualities won't protect them from their own creative ambitions or the betrayals of their hearts.
“It’s tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow. It’s the possibility of infinite rebirth, infinite redemption. The idea that if you keep playing, you could win. No loss is permanent, because nothing is permanent, ever.”
I’ll be honest—it took me a while to get through this book. The first ~20% covers the genesis of a friendship that would last a lifetime. I don’t normally read contemporary fiction, unless it is romance, but there was something about this book’s summary that hooked me. So despite the urge to DNF multiple times, and even putting the book on hold for weeks, I finally found time to finish during a flight from California to Virginia. The author was thorough, covering multiple POVs and one that truly broke my heart and reduced me to tears during my in-flight reading session.
If you happen to read this book and love it just as much as I do, might I also suggest the series Mythic Quest on Apply TV. The episodes “Dark Quiet Death” (S1E5) and “Sarian” (S3E7) are very Tomorrow³-coded.
Content Warnings
Note: This is not an exhaustive list of content and trigger warnings.
gun violence • death • suicide • death of parent • mass shooting • grief • toxic relationships • medical trauma • homophobia
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Owned: hardcover from Amazon