- Focus on the videogame industry.
- Make the main characters my age.
- Have the title be a reference to one of my favorite Shakespearian speeches.
When Sam Masur and Sadie Green met, they were both kids at a hospital. Sadie was there because of her sister's illness, while Sam was because of a car accident that left one of his feet severely damaged. Over the course of several weeks the pair's shared love of videogames made them fast friends, until their friendship suddenly came to an end.
Fast-forward several years and the two are in college in Boston, Sadie at MIT, Sam at Harvard. While the two had occasionally seen each other over the intervening years, it wasn't until this one fateful day that they actually started talking for the first time since they were kids. From there, the pair get inspired to develop a game while still in school. With the help of Sam's roommate, they start a company, Unfair Games, and while the company grows and has its successes and failures, the core of Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow is the friendship between Sadie and Sam and the many ups and downs they have.
Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow does a fantastic job of showing both main characters as very human and complex people. While they are both brilliant, they are massively flawed and often we see those flaws from the other person's perspective. When Sadie feels like she was being manipulated by Sam because of a prior relationship of hers, she sees him as a person who will stop at nothing to get what he wants, and even though we've followed Sam just as much as Sadie, the reader easily believes it could be true. When Sam feels betrayed by Sadie, we feel it from his perspective. The reader knows both characters from both perspectives, and much like their best friend and financial backer, Marx, finds it hard to side with either one. Put simply, they are both fully sketched out, complex people artfully put to paper.
Interestingly enough, the story of Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow doesn't follow a standard linear progression. For the most part, the story starts when Sam and Sadie reconnect in Boston. It shows them in their early career as they spring off their first success and each subsequent game, but many of the pieces of the characters' backstories don't really get presented to the reader until the reader needs to know. The pair's first meeting in the hospital and their subsequent estrangement isn't explored right away. The accident that put Sam in the hospital and why he lives with his grandparents is implied, but not shown until about halfway through the book. Even events that should have been seen because they happen while the main story is unfolding aren't on-screen until later in the book because it wasn't necessarily important right then, or at least not to Sadie and Sam. Some of these pieces aren't really revealed until the book briefly (and powerfully) switches away from Sadie and Sam. While this manner of storytelling was jarring at first, it allowed for the story to hit the ground running without a lot of buildup, and each time the book goes to fill in some blanks, the resulting revelations just adds more depth to the characters involved.
From beginning to end, I enjoyed Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow. I'm typically a speculative fiction reader, so I don't generally go for "slice of life" stories that don't have something fantastical about them, but like I said at the beginning, this book seemed to be crafted to grab my attention and I wasn't disappointed. On top of that, Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow has the best use of second person perspective I have ever read. Most of the book is in third person, following either Sadie or Sam, but there is a segment that switches to second person and follows a different character during a very pivotal part of the story. Not only does this have a strong impact because it's the only time this character is central to the narrative (as opposed to just being near the other two), but by making it second person, the reader is thrust into this character's viewpoint in a way that even the rest of the book doesn't accomplish. "You" are seeing the world through this character's eyes. "You" are remembering your history with the other characters. "You" have stories to tell that they didn't even know about or seem to care about. "You" are this character, and man does it bring with it some strong emotions. For this segment alone, I have to applaud Zevin, but that section wouldn't have been nearly as impactful without the rest of the story centered around this character's friends.
If the subject even slightly tickles your fancy, then you will want to pick up this book. It is a great read with strong characters that feels like it was written by someone who knows the videogame industry.
