Summary

When they meet in the hospital as children, Sadie and Sam bond over their love for video games. Now college students, a chance encounter in a busy city street leads them to reconnect. Their love for video games has only grown in their time apart, and they found their own video game company, Unfair Games. During their decades-long relationship in the spotlight, they experience fame, success, crushing defeat, and a tragedy that threatens to rip them apart forever. This is a novel about work, enduring love, friendship, and our diminishing tomorrows.

Review

I am a sucker for a novel heavy on character development. The third-person omniscient narration of this novel lets the reader delve deeper into the thoughts and backstories of the main characters, which gives the novel layers of depth. Zevin has a knack for crafting such realistic and tender backstories for each of her characters.

The title Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow is based on the titular character’s main soliloquy in Shakespeare’s Macbeth. With Macbeth’s plans to ascend the throne going awry, this soliloquy captures his nihilism as he realizes that he has no more chances to succeed.

I adored how Zevin incorporated this sentiment of running out of time in this novel. Video games are a landscape full of second chances: save points, replenishing health meters, and the ability to restart the level. These concepts, coupled with Sam and Sadie’s youthful energy, grind against the ever-present march of “tomorrow.” We have so much time. There isn’t enough time.

I thought this book was about video games and the struggles of creating art with a lifetime friend. But it is so much more, and Zevin balances multiple themes with ease.

It is easy to base a book on the concept of Macbeth’s soliloquy and to become entrenched in its nihilism. But Zevin shows us the preciousness of the art we create and the friendships we form in a world of limited time. Yes, our days are limited; but doesn’t that make them even more exceptional?

Rating: 8/10