Hardcover, 401 pages
English language
Published July 5, 2022 by Knopf.
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 …
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.
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, disability, failure, the redemptive possibilities in play, and above all, our need to connect: to be loved and to love. Yes, it is a love story, but it is not one you have read before.
Interesting setting, unlikeable characters, some cool experiments in writing style but please put down the thesaurus
No matter what you do. As long the heart is beating, there's a chance to make a difference.
A beautiful book, I only regret I didn't get around to reading it earlier. To my pleasant surprise, it wasn't really about gaming or game design, though the characters do both. It was about people and relationships and life and it made me think and feel, and that makes for a darn good book.
No me ha convencido del todo. Me ha parecido muy complicado entender a los dos protas; dicen ser súper amigos, pero su relación se basa en mentiras, envidias y peleas. Muchas de las relaciones/interacciones entre los personajes, sobre todo ellos dos, tienen muy poco sentido.
No sabía que iba sobre videojuegos antes de empezar a leer, y siendo yo jugador, uno pensaría que sería una parte que me interesaría, pero no ha sido el caso. Todas las partes en las que hablan de diseño de los juegos me han parecido fofas, pretenciosas y algo desconectadas del desarrollo real. La primera mitad del libro es bastante mejor que la segunda, que parece no saber muy bien a dónde va, además de dar la impresión de que la autora tiene que pasar por una serie de checks temáticos porque es lo que toca.
Lo he leído en español, y la traducción ni …
No me ha convencido del todo. Me ha parecido muy complicado entender a los dos protas; dicen ser súper amigos, pero su relación se basa en mentiras, envidias y peleas. Muchas de las relaciones/interacciones entre los personajes, sobre todo ellos dos, tienen muy poco sentido.
No sabía que iba sobre videojuegos antes de empezar a leer, y siendo yo jugador, uno pensaría que sería una parte que me interesaría, pero no ha sido el caso. Todas las partes en las que hablan de diseño de los juegos me han parecido fofas, pretenciosas y algo desconectadas del desarrollo real. La primera mitad del libro es bastante mejor que la segunda, que parece no saber muy bien a dónde va, además de dar la impresión de que la autora tiene que pasar por una serie de checks temáticos porque es lo que toca.
Lo he leído en español, y la traducción ni fu ni fa. Algunas decisiones de localización, como traducir nombres de los juegos/estudios que crean los personajes, pero no los juegos reales que referencian (esto tiene muy poco sentido "in-universe") o traducir código BASIC, sobre todo cuando en el siguiente párrafo lo explican.
Lo bueno del libro es que, aunque sea bastante gordo (creo que debería durar la mitad) es que se lee rápido, y malo malo, no es, pero tampoco creo que esté especialmente bien escrito.
I feel like I'm not being totally fair to the book, because I started judging it based on its reputation and hype versus its own merits. On its own, it's a spirited attempt to present a complex interpersonal relationship amidst the backdrop of an industry that is more and more relevant to the average reader with the passing of the years. Ultimately, I was really hoping for more integration of these digital worlds that Zevin envisioned, Mapleworld and Pioneers. The characters themselves....were tough for me to stick with. Sam ranges from really nasty to awkwardly solipsistic in his attempts to reach out to his best friends. Sadie is ready to stop all forward progress in character development at the first sign of Zevin setting her up for trauma. Basically, I thought this book would evolve us past the need for books like Neuromancer, but we're still waiting for that day.
A wonderfully written story about the adult years of growing up, on a backdrop of the intense creative processes of video game design. I want these games to be real. I want to feel the characters expression through their art.
There are books where it’s a novel situation played out through understandable and straightforward characters. And then there are books where you have no idea how someone can keep so many deep actors in their head, you wonder if they were real people. Each character with their own motivations, and perspective. Sometimes I cheered for them. Sometimes I hated them. Always I loved them.
In any case, it’s a beautiful story. Heartbreaking and tragic.
I liked this. I might not play enough games to fully appreciate it? But I was very into the complicated friendship and the emphasis on the rarity of that connection.
TTT is not something I would usually pick up on my own. Not fantastical enough in premise. But these characters are alive. I love them. Gabrielle Zevin’s writing of their interactions, how they process the world, their emotions is fantastic. How she flows from plot, introspection, and memory is effortless. I understand each character’s point of view. And I grieve how these relationships break down over the unsaid and assumed.
I am learning so much about how to write a character’s inner world—characters that can be known. I am learning so much about relationships in real life. I love to learn.
There is a beginning and a middle. The end it's up to you.
This is a very good book about relationships of all kinds - familial, romantic, friendly - and the relationships that are harder to define in a single word. Sure, it's also about video game design, narrative structure, being empathetic and kind, and a little love letter to Southern California. It feels like the 1990s, and also timeless. Zevin writes wonderfully about gender, race, age, and all the ups and downs of those definitions across generations.
Very highly recommended, for people who like people.
I loved a lot of this: the deep character building; the reality-details; and the odd topic of early game development. I found at the end, though, that I didn't love it as much as I had while I'd been reading. I grew to dislike Sadie pretty strongly, and felt like her character didn't get as much development as the men, and therefore her choices and behaviors felt abrupt and awful. I'm annoyed that the one woman in the book wasn't treated as carefully and fully as the other two--it really spoiled the whole barrel for me. Having said that, the story and the writing are pretty amazing in how they pull you in and don't let go.
I didn't feel like there was any clear plot driving this story. I didn't like any of the characters, except Marx. In fact, Sam and Sadie are at each other's throats for the majority of the story. Both holding grudges against perceived slights that have been blown way out of proportion and exacerbated by refusing to talk through their issues. I dislike stories where the main conflict is caused by miscommunication.
I enjoyed the discussion of game design and I would love a chance to play Pioneers!
I picked this book up after seeing it on the "best" list from the Washington Post, and was not disappointed. I am not a gamer. But this isn't really a book about video games -- it is about the fascinating friendship which grows among the main characters. To reveal too much about how these friendships evolve would inevitably give up the
The characters in the book are roughly the same age as me, and there is a lot in this book that will speak to kids of the 80s and 90s. I was practically offended when, on page 99, the Zevin writes that Chris Cornell was "the lead singer of the grunge band Soundgarden." Who else would it be?! Kidding aside, I never felt like this book dragged, and watching the evolution of the friendship felt true. A great read.
A beautiful novel about work, friendship, love, and identity. I suppose it's about video games too, but not really; it could just as easily be about any creative act. I loved Zevin's writing, the melancholy story, and even the characters (although they've been maligned elsewhere). For me, the work is only diminished by the knowledge that she used concepts from some real-world games (e.g., Train) without credit. It would have been so easy to fix.
I had heard almost zero criticism of this book prior to reading it, so I went into it with high hopes, and expected to enjoy it. Not only did I enjoy it, but it's one of the best books I've ever read, and it's the type of book I could see myself doing annual rereads of. It was that good, and it had its hooks in me from the start.
Despite the three main characters being about a decade older than me, I found myself easily identifying with them, and feeling like they could have been friends of mine. The camaraderie the three of them shared was a delight to behold, as they navigated their 20s and 30s and dealt with the normal issues 20 and 30somethings deal with, in addition to their own demons. Sam and Sadie's relationship is especially turbulent at times, and they sometimes made me want …
I had heard almost zero criticism of this book prior to reading it, so I went into it with high hopes, and expected to enjoy it. Not only did I enjoy it, but it's one of the best books I've ever read, and it's the type of book I could see myself doing annual rereads of. It was that good, and it had its hooks in me from the start.
Despite the three main characters being about a decade older than me, I found myself easily identifying with them, and feeling like they could have been friends of mine. The camaraderie the three of them shared was a delight to behold, as they navigated their 20s and 30s and dealt with the normal issues 20 and 30somethings deal with, in addition to their own demons. Sam and Sadie's relationship is especially turbulent at times, and they sometimes made me want to scream, but their friendship and love for each other always won out in the end. Marx was the glue that kept it all together, and for me was the star of the story, the hero that Sam, Sadie, and others in their orbit needed.
I could go on and on, but it's best if you just read it for yourself. Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow is many things. It's smart, funny, empowering, nostalgic, and even tragic. To me, the word that describes it best is masterpiece.
