Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow
Gabrielle Zevin
Rave
Positive
Mixed
Pan
Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow
Gabrielle Zevin
Rave
Positive
Mixed
Pan
Rave
Positive
Mixed
Pan
Moral complexity is a hallmark of Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, which takes its title from Shakespeare, not Nintendo...But even while alluding to that anguished soliloquy about the brevity and meaninglessness of life, Zevin has her hand on the joystick...In a moment, she flips Macbeth’s lament into a countervailing celebration of the endless possibilities of rebirth and renewal, the chance to play again tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow...In the story that develops, Sam and Sadie become legendary founders of a company called Unfair Games, and questions about the fairness or unfairness of who gets the credit, who bears the responsibility and who makes the final decisions continue to churn off-screen as their many fans keep clamoring for more, more, more...Zevin provides alluring descriptions of the products that Unfair Games creates, and she includes just enough technical detail to make us feel as if we may understand what a graphics engine does, but she rarely exploits the gaming structure much in this conventionally told novel...In her acknowledgments, Zevin describes herself as 'a lifelong gamer'...That level of experience could very well have produced a story of hermetically sealed nostalgia impenetrable to anyone who doesn’t still own a copy of 'Space Invaders'...But instead, she’s written a novel that draws any curious reader into the pioneering days of a vast entertainment industry too often scorned by bookworms..
... delightful and absorbing.
... engrossing.
... playing and reading are natural companions, and Zevin gracefully weaves together the two in language that is pleasingly accessible to non-gamers.
... whatever its subject, when a novel is powerful enough, it transports us readers deep into worlds not our own. That's true of Moby Dick, and it's certainly true of Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, which renders the process of designing a great video game as enthralling as the pursuit of that great white whale.
... a fascinating and cleverly written exploration of the relationship between two close friends, but it unfortunately struggles with handling its multiple plotlines in the book’s later sections.
... a fascinating fictional hybrid: a view into the intricate art and craft of video-game design, a poignant bildungsroman, and a love story. A prolific novelist, Gabrielle Zevin is equally comfortable with poetic language and computer coding concepts, and she excels at depicting the subtlest of human emotions.
... while fans of her more recent adult work seem, on the whole, to be surprised by the innovative emotional and formal somersaulting of Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow (out this week from Knopf Doubleday), anyone who’s at all versed in her YA work will immediately understand that everything she took such big teen-oriented swings at a dozen years ago—not just emotional themes and character types, but also temporally interwoven narrative devices, a deep interest in how people grow and change from childhood to old age, and an playfully circular theory of life—she’s pulled together into one expansive world with the emotional wallop of a tale that is Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow.
Teenagers of the 21st century are as likely to bond over video games as they are rock music or movies. Gabrielle Zevin’s exhilarating, timely and emotive book is perhaps the first novel to truly get to grips with what this means.
Zevin creates beautifully flawed characters often caught between the real and gaming worlds, which are cleverly juxtaposed to highlight their similarities and differences. Both readers of love stories and gamers will enjoy. Highly recommended..
It’s clear from the premise alone that Gabrielle Zevin loves games, but readers don’t have to be gamers to appreciate this story (though there are many Easter eggs hidden for people who have played even basic-level games).
It's impossible to predict how, exactly, you'll fall in love with Gabrielle Zevin's novel Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, but it's an eventuality you can't escape.
When Sam Masur recognizes Sadie Green in a crowded Boston subway station, midway through their college careers at Harvard and MIT, he shouts, 'SADIE MIRANDA GREEN. YOU HAVE DIED OF DYSENTERY!'...This is a reference to the hundreds of hours—609 to be exact—the two spent playing 'Oregon Trail' and other games when they met in the children’s ward of a hospital where Sam was slowly and incompletely recovering from a traumatic injury and where Sadie was secretly racking up community service hours by spending time with him, a fact which caused the rift that has separated them until now...They determine that they both still game, and before long they’re spending the summer writing a soon-to-be-famous game together...A lifelong gamer herself, Zevin has written the book she was born to write, a love letter to every aspect of gaming...Readers who recognize the references will enjoy them, and those who don't can look them up and/or simply absorb them...Zevin’s delight in her characters, their qualities, and their projects sprinkles a layer of fairy dust over the whole enterprise...Sure to enchant even those who have never played a video game in their lives, with instant cult status for those who have..
Zevin returns with an exhilarating epic of friendship, grief, and computer game development...In 1986, Sadie Green, 11, visits a children’s hospital where her sister is recovering from cancer...There, she befriends another patient, a 12-year-old Korean Jewish boy named Sam Masur, who has a badly injured foot, and the two bond over their love for video games...Years later, they reconnect while attending college in Boston...Sam is wowed by a game Sadie developed, called Solution...In it, a player who doesn’t ask questions will unknowingly build a widget for the Third Reich, thus forcing the player to reflect on the impact of their moral choices...He proposes they design a game together, and relying on help from his charming, wealthy Japanese Korean roommate, Marx, and Sadie’s instructor cum abusive lover, Dov, they score a massive hit with Ichigo, inspired by The Tempest...Zevin layers the narrative with her characters’ wrenching emotional wounds as their relationships wax and wane, including Sadie’s resentment about sexism in gaming, Sam’s loss of his mother, and his foot amputation...Even more impressive are the visionary and transgressive games (another, a shooter, is based on the poems of Emily Dickinson)...This is a one-of-a-kind achievement..