Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, Gabrielle Zevin

The book’s themes center around relationships… of course… and gaming. I don’t game… so I was curious to see if this book would hold my attention.. and for most of the 400 pages it did. Beginning as young children who meet at a children’s hospital, Sadie and Sam have one very important thing in common… video games. We start there and follow their lives into adulthood.  Love – the what ifs; the building of scenarios in your mind; friendships ending and being reborn again; work relationships and dynamics. After a falling out they meet up once again in college – Sadie at MIT, Sam at Harvard. They reconnect their bond by making a video game together. A video game that becomes popular. Sadie from Beverly Hills, Sam from K-town LA. Marx – roommate to Sam and future lover of Sadie. Dov, the MIIT professor – who controls Sadie in so many wrong ways.

The idea that you don’t want to be with someone who loves something or someone more than yourself. Perhaps virtual worlds are better than the actual world… they can be more moral, more just, more progressive, more empathetic, and more accommodating of difference. Perhaps that’s why they are so popular? No matter how bad the word gets, you can always disappear into a virtual game.

They move back to LA in 1999. Marx and Sadie fall in love in Tokyo. They have a child. Then something happens to Marx – he dies. In and around all this are the games they create. Stories within the games reveal who actually the characters in the book are all about. In the span of 30 years the book examines the multifarious nature of identity, disability, failure, the need to connect…. To be loved and to love.