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.
Utterly immersive, and clever without you needing to be clever to follow along. First un-putdownable book I have read in some time. Insightful and complex and light and sad and happy. So glad to have read it.
A friendship story. A game story. A love story. Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow is a bittersweet novel about all this and more. I don’t think you have to be a Gen X gamer to appreciate the flashbacks and the game parts, but I think it hits different if you are. You were there, then. It becomes your story too, if only for a moment.
I enjoyed the writing, and the way characters and all mention of games and gaming feel accurate and authentic. It also left a mark, I’ll be thinking about a certain expression of love for a long time to come.
This book ticks all the boxes for me. It's not only about game development and unrequited / platonic love, it touches on so many things. Honestly couldn't put it down, for good reasons. I kept raving about it for days after finishing it, still think about it sometimes. Could have done without the communication issues creating unnecessary drama – they made the characters feel really frustrating at times, but those are the flaws they come with, I guess.
Feel like everyone I know read this book last year - so I'm a little behind the curve - but finally I got around to see what all the hype is about.
I really enjoyed it. Having been a big gamer as a kid a still somewhat now, it all felt super real to me.
The characters were beautifully drawn, fully realised, deep and complex people.
There were a couple or irks I had (someone got word-of-the-day toilet paper for Christmas eh?) but nothing that stopped me having a great time with this book.
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.
"'Can you believe our luck?' Marx said. 'We bought a house with a tree that has my actual favorite fruit.' Sam used to say that Marx was the most fortunate person he had ever met-he was lucky with lovers, in business, in looks, in life. But the longer Sadie knew Marx, the more she thought Sam hadn't truly understood the nature of Marx's good fortune. Marx was fortunate because he saw everything as if it were a fortuitous bounty. It was impossible to know-were persimmons his favorite fruit, or had they just now become his favorite fruit because there they were, growing in his own backyard? He had certainly never mentioned persimmons before."
Moving and faulted characters, makes creating and playing videogames seem like a romantic adventure. I enjoyed it a lot and came to care for Sadie, Sam and specially Marx. It does overuse my least favourite trope, which …
"'Can you believe our luck?' Marx said. 'We bought a house with a tree that has my actual favorite fruit.' Sam used to say that Marx was the most fortunate person he had ever met-he was lucky with lovers, in business, in looks, in life. But the longer Sadie knew Marx, the more she thought Sam hadn't truly understood the nature of Marx's good fortune. Marx was fortunate because he saw everything as if it were a fortuitous bounty. It was impossible to know-were persimmons his favorite fruit, or had they just now become his favorite fruit because there they were, growing in his own backyard? He had certainly never mentioned persimmons before."
Moving and faulted characters, makes creating and playing videogames seem like a romantic adventure. I enjoyed it a lot and came to care for Sadie, Sam and specially Marx. It does overuse my least favourite trope, which is miscommunication aka "everything would be fixed if these two characters had an actual conversation".
Really good to start with but went downhill. Also not sure how readable it would be for someone with no interest at all in computer games.
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.
"Maybe it was the willingness to play that hinted at a tender, eternally newborn part in all humans. Maybe it was the willingness to play that kept one from despair."
Yo video games are pretty cool!!! And diving deep into the process of making video games + also exploring the both beautiful and terrible relationships of the makers is double cool.
Loved the musings about games and play (as seen above). Loved the complex relationships between these very flawed characters. (As a retired gamer) Loved the gaming nostalgia. Loved how the NPC is the best person in this story: long live NPCs and Hufflepuffs everywhere!
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.
