To make a game is to imagine the person playing it.
Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow
by Gabrielle Zevin
Genre: Contemporary
About: When Sam Masur bumps into Sadie Green at a train station one morning, it's been six years since they last spoke. Childhood best friends who turned into strangers, they promise they will never pass so many years again without speaking. Reunited, they vow to make a game together. A game that will make history and that will bond them together more surely than marriage.
The Good
This book, like Sam and Sadie's games, makes you feel something. It's a mood read, full of nostalgia, obsessions you only have when you're young, and the detached cynicism you grow into as you get older. Sam, Sadie and Marx are fantastic characters that you easily fall in love with precisely because of how much love the three of them have for each other. Sometimes. Sometimes they hate each other. I love the moodiness of the story. It's very reflective, tying its narrative to the art of making games and how that art is received. Gameplay is even used as a way to evolve the characters from one life stage to another. It's less a story about what happens to them than it is about the experience of growing up.
The Bad
I felt very attached to the characters, but not necessarily the narrative style. It was interesting and very well done, but it at times it could be as foggy as Myre Landing. We get glimpses into their lives - certain aspects of it, at certain times, in an uncertain order. Sadie's family life is cut down to a sister and grandmother, while Sam's is mostly grandparents and pizza with the story of his parents coming to us a lot further into the story. As I said, it's done in a very cool and interesting way, but it left me a little detached. I felt like I knew Sam and Sadie so well, but actually you only ever know them really well in the context of them making games together. The rest of their life and experiences is locked behind a fog, which the player/reader gets brief glimpses into when convenient to the story e.g. Lola
The Somewhat Iffy
In the very first pages, when we first meet Sam, it's very obvious that Sadie is the love of his life. Yet this story is not their love story. We only get that intensity from Sam about Sadie a few times in the narrative, and always at points when it's too late. It left me wondering whether I should be rooting for them to get together, or was the point that their love is better than romantic love? If so, why have Sam so heartsick over Sadie if the romance is not the thing that makes their relationship special? I suppose the opening and certain later scenes made me feel this was a One True Love romance, when it didn't feel like it was that by the end.
And while I do get the importance of the Pioneers section, I didn't feel it needed to be this whole separate narrative. Sadie's entry into motherhood and her grieving process is completely detached from the reader, instead transformed into a players section. Theoretically it's a very cool narrative style, but these were very important years given to us, essentially, symbolically.
Overall
I absolutely understand the hype for this and can see this being one of those really important books that just speaks to a reader. For me, I loved the characters and the vibes of the story; I thought it was a clever and an emotional read, but it didn't leave me fully satisfied.
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