Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin

Publisher: Knopf

First Publication: 2022

Book Review: Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin

Alright, my beloved nerds, geeks, and fans of epically quirky fiction – I’ve got the perfect book to shove directly into your eye-holes and soul-vessels. Gabrielle Zevin’s Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow is a sweeping, decades-spanning celebration of brilliant misfits, the ruthless video game industry, and a friendship so cosmically intertwined, it’ll make you believe in soul twins separated at birth by the cruelest of isolating forces…like being born to different parents or something.

Summary:

Our star-crossed coding comrades in this tragicomic odyssey are Sam Masur and Sadie Green, two kids who meet under the least chill of circumstances—11-year-old Sam surviving a horrific accident, and Sadie being…well, Sadie, aka the perpetual chaos gremlin, even at a tender age. Bonding over their mutual outcast status and ability to find the layers upon layers of an 8-bit game’s genius, a spark is lit that will burn across decades of creative partnership.

From there, we follow their journey as they try to balance their bold, uncompromising creative visions with the harsh realities of corporate game development. Marathon coding sessions, endless rewrites to appease money-grubbing execs, euphoric bursts of inspiration, all-is-lost moments of self-doubt—Zevin puts you in the gaming trenches alongside Sam and Sadie as they pour their entire beings into constructing a pop-culture redefining masterpiece.

But while it’s endlessly fascinating to get the behind-the-curtain looks at just how much absurd genius and perseverance go into crafting those immersive on-screen worlds we take for granted, the book’s soul lies in the transcendent bond Sam and Sadie share. Are they soulmates separated by the corporeal plane? Kindred creative aliens trying to building their spaceship back home? Soul twins who simply base the binary of romance with their connection? Let’s just say whatever label you try to slap on it feels utterly insufficient.

Analysis and Evaluation:

Right off the bat, I have to give Zevin her well-deserved props for pulling off what could’ve been a total tonal misfire – injecting wild ambition, technical nuance, and outright pretentiousness about video games into a compulsively readable work of literary genius. This is some next-level stuff where she dares to explore gaming and game design with the sort of intellectual heft and respect typically reserved for established “high art” forms like novels or films. We’re talking coding digressions that will make you feel smarter just by reading them, deep philosophical dives into the nature of storytelling, and so much unapologetically earnest gushing over the craftsmanship behind some of gaming’s seminal masterpieces.

Reading sections like the creation of Sadie’s magnum opus or the lovingly rendered look inside a mid-90s game studio, you can’t help but feel like you’re being inducted into some sacred order of dorky enlightenment. Like a total non-gamer whose mind was just blown by the realization that making their favorite Mario or Zelda games was akin to an act of secular sainthood, albeit one peppered with tons of soda cans and sleep deprivation rather than robes and chanting. It’s honestly kind of exhilarating and humbling to read Zevin’s intricate renderings of this often-overlooked creative sphere.

But for as enthralling as her gaming industry peekers are, let’s be real – the book’s pulsing, radiant heart lies in the gravity-defying connection forged between Sam and Sadie across countless highs, lows, fallings-out, and rapturous reunions. In a media landscape still frustratingly reductive about depicting nuanced male bonding that transcends alpha-brodom’s bro-y confines, Zevin barrels straight into uncharted waters of portraying a decidedly queer-coded but indefinable intimacy of two hyper-intelligent souls who simply grokedthe fundamental truth of each other from day one.

Are they star-crossed lovers ultimately torn apart by fate and baggage? Cosmic creative soulmates brought together by the universe to collectively manifest their wildest dreams and nightmares? Kindred outcasts forging a sanctuary of radical acceptance? Weavers to the hackneyed binaries and societal boxes we’re indoctrinated to comply with from birth? I’d argue Sam and Sadie’s forever thing encompasses multitudes and elements of all those dynamics and then some – a relationship that becomes profoundly human for how utterly alien and inexpressible it seems through the limited lens of our feeble linguistic constructs.

All I know is that by the time their courtship dance of falling in and out of each other’s gravities ends with them finally, cosmically consummating their bond, you feel like something sacred has transpired on the page. Not just because the prose is so rapturously tactile, but because it utterly demolishes our artificial, cultural delineations of what does and doesn’t constitute valid intimacy, love, or bonding. When two brilliant, beautifully destructive souls have found their perpetual home in one another’s existence in spite of everything, one can’t but feel expanded a little bit too.

And all that isn’t even touching on how Zevin layers their relationship in profound emotional truth-telling about the ruthlessness of pursuing creative ambition in our capitalist age. For as rhapsodic as scenes can get when Sam and Sadie are in the throes of a marathon crank, she renders their artistic endeavors in a brutally unvarnished, heartbreakingly specific light that anyone who’s ever struggled to merge art and commerce will instantly recognize.

Petty corporate politics constantly threatening to derail the purity of vision. The agonizing grip of self-doubt that no idea is ever truly “enough.” The way creative expression gets commodified, commercialized, and contorted beyond recognition by executives with no skin in the game. Zevin wraps Sam and Sadie’s exuberant passions in layer after layer of those crushing external pressures that make the soaring triumphs shine with blood, sweet, and dogged perseverance. This isn’t just some pie-eyed idyll about creative geniuses unencumbered by earthly burdens – it’s a vital illustration of how their love and work has to battle misogyny, greed, mental health demons, institutional rejection, and societal alienation before any single story gets birthed into the world.

Conclusion: Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow

By the time Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow reaches its transcendent finale, relishing the incandescent spark Sam and Sadie have catalyzed across decades of synergistic churns, the sheer magnitude of what Zevin has accomplished here settles over you like a cosmic baptism. On one level, yes, she’s penned a true-to-life gaming industry epic that educates and enlightens as much as it entertains. And on another, she’s delivered a multipronged, stunningly visceral character portrait that few storytellers would dare to attempt in this oversimplified age.

But most importantly, Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow stands as a paean to the profound, unshakable bonds that can form when two peculiar but brilliant persons intersect at precisely the right cosmic juncture. For all its ambitious world-expanding, thematic depth charges, and daring swings at gender essentialism, the novel ultimately gazes inward at its radiant core – celebrating the life force made possible when kindred spirits awaken each other’s most extraordinary selves through the hard-won act of vulnerable witness-bearing across lifetimes.

Zevin has crafted something transcendent and eternal here – an artifact beaming straight from the here and elsewhere that reminds us what’s possible when we choose to reverence the mysterious forces that usher us toward our most electrifying ambitions and transformative partnerships. Whether you’re a lifelong gaming fan or a passionate seeker of Truth in all its strange and unifying forms, this uncompromising, soul-renovating literary journey demands to be experienced with your fullest capacities for awe and surrender. Pack your preconceptions in the overhead bin and prepare for the most surprisingly profound turbulence.