Book Talk | Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow

 I was sitting at the cafè inside of Barnes & Nobles, working on my laptop and minding my own business when I looked over and saw a pretty display of a very bold cover that I had seen plenty of times. I've seen he cover of Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow plenty of times, but for some reason, I didn't think that I would like it. This very particular time at Barnes & Nobles, I felt really compelled to give it a chance, and this was a B&N exclusive copy with the blue edged pages. So I picked it up and saved it for a day when I didn't have anything else to read. Just so happened, this was this was that time. Read on to find out more about Gabrielle Zevin's Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow. 

About the Author

Gabrielle Zevin is a New York Times best-selling novelist whose books have been translated into forty languages. Her tenth novel, Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, was a New York Times Best Seller, a Sunday Times Best Seller, and a selection of the Tonight Show’s Fallon Book Club. Tomorrow was Amazon.com’s #1 Book of the Year, Time Magazine’s #1 Book of the Year, a New York Times Notable Book, and the winner of both the Goodreads Choice Award for Fiction and the Book of the Month Club’s Book of the Year. Following a twenty-five-bidder auction, the feature film rights to Tomorrow were acquired by Temple Hill and Paramount Studios. 

 About the Story 

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. They borrow money, beg favors, and, before even graduating college, they have created their first blockbuster, Ichigo: a game where players can escape the confines of a body and the betrayals of a heart, and where death means nothing more than a chance to restart and play again. This is the story of the perfect worlds Sam and Sadie build, the imperfect world they live in, and of everything that comes after success: Money. Fame. Duplicity. Tragedy.

Spanning thirty years, from Cambridge, Massachusetts, to Venice Beach, California, and lands in between and far beyond, Gabrielle Zevin’s Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow is a dazzling and intricately imagined novel that examines the multifarious nature of identity, games as artform, technology and the human experience, disability, failure, the redemptive possibilities in play, and above all, our need to connect: to be loved and to love.

Book Talk

Despite it's bright and colorful cover, Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow is a very melancholy book to read. It's sad and tragic, but artistic, raw, with some beautiful moments in between. I didn't think this book was for me, but I found myself completely zoned in from the very first chapter until the end. 

This is a coming-of-age story, which is my favorite genre for some reason, but it comes from the point of adulthood. Instead of teenagers trying to find themselves in an adult world, we get three adults trying to find themselves in the adult world that they are already exist in but don't know how to navigate. all three of our main characters, Sam, Sadie, and Marx, are figuring out what they want to do with their lives, what it takes to make it in business, what love really is, and how to love themselves. They all find out in different ways that life isn't perfect blue sky dreams, but just cause the sky they paint is purple, doesn't mean it's wrong or right. They learn to work on themselves individually and together, throghout the book, which spans years. As someone who is 29 at the time of writing this, I appreciate a story that acknowledges that we continue learning and growing, even if we do find ourselves being the oldest in the room.

“What is a game?" Marx said. "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.” 

Throughout the novel, our characters venture through different big world events and video game history and drop big name titles and studio directors. As I was reading, I was consciously aware that this was a work of fiction, but because the story was so immersed into the history of the gaming world and outside world, I kept wondering if any of it was actually true. Thankfully, our author writes a whole couple of pages worth at the end of the story about what's real and the accuracy of the timeline and what not, so I appreciated that. 

Overall, I loved almost every inch of this book. It's not the most happiest book, but it's a reflection on how different people deal with their traumas in life and what they do when their sky is purple and not blue. I'm happy to have bought the special Barnes & Noble edition of this book and I'm looking forward to the movie adaption.

Until next time, Happy Reading!