You Should Read Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow Today

Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow is not a novel about videogames, nor is it a novel about MacBeth (from which the title is taken).  Gabrielle Zevin’s novel is about the complexity of relationships, the beauty of connection, and the heartbreaking realities of existence. But most importantly, and somehow more so than any novel I have read in my brief 26 years, Tomorrow is about love.

A crippled, erudite young man meets a freckled, ambitious young woman. But the rest is not simply “history”. It is pages and pages of heartbreakingly documented memories, experiences, triumphs, and losses. It is a friendship as substantial and long-lived as it is tragic.

When Zevin introduces Sam and Sadie, our parallel protagonists, the two do have history. But it’s not the contrived sort of history that might give a brief foundation on which to build a first chapter. It’s the real, messy, painful sort of history that two living, breathing people might share. Herein lies the gorgeous mosaic that Gabrielle Zevin assembles before us.

Katsushika Hokusai // Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Following Sam and Sadie is an adventure through time. When we meet them they’re in college, with the implication that they met in their early lives. We then rush to the moment they met, contextualized for us only with the information we have so far. As the book carries on, we’ll meet Sam and Sadie at various stages in their lives and return to times we’ve been before.

The art of Zevin’s masterpiece is not in the chronology, but in the masterful use of recontextualizing.

Each time we return to a period of Sam’s life, we are given new pieces to his life’s puzzle.

Each time we follow Sadie’s thoughts, we are reminded that her perspective is wholly different than Sam’s.

Without getting too thick into the plot or spoilers, let me illustrate an example of this:

There is a brief period in college when Sam visits Sadie every day. She’s depressed, and we know why. Sam manages to lift Sadie out of her depression, and their friendship begins anew. There are many emotional moments here, as well as little details that get fleshed out later. The story moves on.

This is heartwarming, right? It’s deep enough. It builds the characters effortlessly and we love them all the more for it.

But towards the end of the novel, that period is recontextualized for us. Sadie knew the actual reason for her depression, but Sam didn’t, and neither did we as the readers. It’s deep-er. It gives us more than we thought we needed. It puts the entire story in a new light. The information breaks us just as it broke Sadie, and now we don’t just read about her pain but feel it too.

There are many instances of this in Zevin’s novel, and they are what make Tomorrow so goddamn good. In fact, in this very same instance, a detail in Sadie’s room during Sam’s visits is later revealed to be a gift from him during their childhood. See what I mean? There are just layers, and layers, and layers of sophisticated emotions in this book.

Avatar // TomorrowX3 // Courtesy of Penguin (penguin.co.uk)

So, what about the videogames in it? Well, the novel is about two people (or three), that create games together. They also play games together. The videogames they play and create hold special significance to them, and playing is acknowledged as an especially intimate activity. But, here’s the thing. You don’t need to have played a videogame to understand this, nor do you need to know anything about videogames to believe the intricate relationships in Zevin’s story. Gaming is simply the way the characters choose to express their creativity.

Creativity is important to Zevin and her characters. Not only does it provide the foundation of the relationships in the novel, it is also painted as one of the most intimate experiences one might share.

To quote the novel itself, “Lovers are common, but true collaborators in this life are rare.”

Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow is breathtaking. The connections with these characters that were built for me over the course of ~400 pages are nothing short of extraordinary. I laughed, I cried, I bawled my eyes out, and I smiled tenderly as I looked over at my own true collaborator who read beside me.

I don’t recommend that you read this book. I recommend that you invest time in experiencing one of the most emotionally poignant tales I’ve ever had the pleasure to turn the pages of.