Genre: Drama (Book)
Premise: Two brilliant college kids take their lifelong love of games and turn it into a successful video game company, only for life to test their company, and them, in ways that neither of them could possibly prepare for.
About:Last year, if you asked anyone with a penchant for reading what book you should read next, 3 out 4 people would’ve told you, “Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow.” Novelist Gabrielle Zevin has been writing books for nearly 2 decades. But none has caught on like this one did. When asked how she came up with the idea, she said that she was in a slump and did what writers do when they’re slumping – procrastinate. Her preferred form of procrastination was video games. But when she found out that her favorite game from her youth, Gold Rush, was no longer available to play, she felt a sense of loss that inspired an idea she encapsulated in just two sentences: “2 video game developers. Their games are their lives.” Zevin never expected in a million years that her offbeat novel would become her most successful one. But something about the characters clicked with readers. It didn’t take long for the book’s success to catch the attention of Hollywood. Paramount snatched the rights off the market for a cool 2 million.
Writer: Gabrielle Zevin
Details: 416 pages
The reason I wanted to review Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow is because it’s the kind of book that’s not supposed to do as well as it did. The books that do well are where some girl is missing, a woman is in a toxic relationship, a concubine is trying to survive in 1820s South Africa, or yet another Holocaust-adjacent story.
There is no proven market for thoughtful stories that span 15 years about video game pals. I like any piece of writing that disproves the narrative so I signed up for Tomorrow x 3. More importantly, when a book or script proves the market wrong, it’s often because the story is amazing. It has to be if it’s going to disprove the trend.
The story starts in the late 1980s in Los Angeles. A young whip-smart girl named Sadie Green is hanging out in the kid’s room at a hospital while her parents tend to her sick sister. It is there where she meets Sam Masur, a weird kid with a severely damaged foot due to a catastrophic car crash that killed his single mom. To pass the time, the two play Super Mario Brothers together and, over the next several months, develop a friendship.
Many years later, when Sam is at Harvard, he runs into Sadie, who’s also going to school out east. “You still play video games?” She asks him. Of course, Sam says. Sadie hands him a disk. “It’s a game I made. Let me know what you think.” Sam goes back to his dorm room where his roommate, Marx (the opposite of Sam in every way – handsome, social, popular) grabs the game and starts playing it. “This is amazing,” he tells Sam.
Sam agrees and gets the wild idea to make a game with Sadie. Over the summer, they create Ichigo, a game about a young child who gets swept out to sea during a tsunami and must somehow make it back to land. The inspired game becomes a sensation and Sam and Sadie are anointed “the next big thing” in video games.
After a not-as-successful sequel, the two head back to their hometown of Los Angeles to start a company with Marx as the CEO. The next game they create is called “Both Sides,” where the main character can switch back and forth between their ordinary mundane life and a heightened intense world where they are a hero. The game is a big enough hit to grow their company.
But the press has a tough time with Sadie and Sam. Despite the two spending every single second together, they are not, nor have they ever been, romantically involved. They’re so flummoxed by their relationship that they eventually give up on trying to make them a thing, instead focusing on Sam’s unique story, which involves his underdog persona brought on by his disfigured foot (Sam must walk around everywhere with a cane).
Eventually, Sadie finds herself being drawn more and more towards Marx, and the two surprise each other by becoming an item. As this is happening, Sam and Sadie’s relationship is deteriorating due to a number of factors (differences in opinion on the company’s direction, Sadie not getting as much credit as Sam from the press, Sadie refusing to make another sequel to Ichigo) and it’s looking like their professional future is in doubt.
(Spoiler but without details) But then something so devastating happens that the two will be forced to reevaluate everything about their friendship, their business, and their lives. Worst of all, this tragedy threatens to destroy the one thing in their lives that they have always been able to turn to when they’ve been down – the simple beauty of getting lost in the brilliant and fun world of video games.
The thing that struck me most about this book was the absence of plot.
It was jarring, at times, how little plot was guiding the story.
The novel, instead, is 98% character. Luckily, it excels in that department. Sam is the most interesting character. At first I thought his broken foot was just a way to get him in the same hospital as Sadie so the author could start their friendship.
But Sam’s foot is its own storyline. Maybe that’s a lesson right off the bat when it comes to plotless stories. Utilize storylines within the character’s life that can become their own pseudo-plots. His foot situation is so complicated that it gets worse and worse over the years until he finally has to amputate it. That alone was a tough pill to swallow. Cause you could see how much it shaped his view of the world.
Another thing about Sam is that he’s asexual. I can’t remember if I’ve ever read a story with an asexual main character. I’ve read every sexuality under the sun, especially over these last few years (homosexual, bisexual, demisexual, pansexual). But asexual? That’s a new one. And it helped make both Sam, and Sam’s relationship with Sadie, wholly unique.
Sadie isn’t as interesting as Sam – she’s basically a poor kid in rich kids shoes – but there’s a certain defiance of conventional thought in her that makes her fun to try and figure out. She shouldn’t be the kind of person who befriends a kid like Sam. And yet she does. And it helps that we’re always trying to figure out, despite their identities (he’s asexual, she sees their relationship as a loving friendship only) if they’re going to get together.
Then you have Marx, a dude who’s incredibly good-looking and charming and gets tons of girls because of it. But he doesn’t have any of the talent Sam or Sadie has. So he’s sort of like the perfect stick in their mud. His presence adds an unpredictable dynamic to the OG friendship that’s fun to speculate on. “Will Marx go for Sadie?” is a question we’re asking almost immediately.
It’s amazing that Zevin is able to get so many pages out of just these three characters doing nothing. I say “nothing” while laughing to myself because I know they’re making video games and growing their company. But the game development in the book becomes repetitive. They just made a game. So making another one isn’t exactly compelling to read. Yet we enjoy seeing how this trio deals with the challenges that come with success.
(Spoilers from here on out) Maybe the reason this book did so well is that their success never feels cliched. This isn’t like a music biopic where you see a singer become famous out of nowhere then stumble into drug use and excess. That’s not this story. Their success is more up and down, which more appropriately mirrors real life. So it feels authentic.
But the main reason I think this book is so popular is because the guy and the girl don’t get together. Think back through novel and movie history when you’ve had a story where the guy and the girl don’t get together at the end. I’m not talking because one has to go to war. Or because outside factors forced them apart. I’m talking about they just don’t get together. Even though they could. I don’t know if it’s ever happened.
So you’re reading this book all the way up to the very last page hoping that it’s finally going to happen. And it doesn’t! It’s so unexpected. It goes to show that if you want to write something that breaks out, you will have to make at least one bold creative choice, the kind of choice that all the books and teachers would tell you never to do.
I have no doubt that when Zevin sent this book out to her friends for notes, they said, “You have to have Sadie and Sam get together!” It’s just not done that you write a book about a girl and a boy over the course of 15 years and there’s never a single romantic moment between them. It’s crazy. And yet I have no doubt that it’s a major reason why this book is such a hit.
Now, I don’t know what Zevin was thinking when she signed on to make this a movie. Maybe she was thinking, “I want a new house.” But this is not a movie. Not in a million years is it a movie. It’s so emphatically a TV show. It’s kind of like the anti-Normal People. That show was about a guy and girl who get into a years-long drawn out sexual and, at times, meaningful relationship. This is about a guy and a girl who get into a years-long drawn out friendship.
TV is character. This novel is character. But we’ll see. It’s such a beloved novel that I’m sure they’ll do everything in their power to make the movie as good as it can be (Zevin is writing the screenplay so she can stay true to her vision). But this could easily be a TV show, and not just a limited one. You could follow these two and their unique friendship for years if need be.
Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow is, at times, difficult to read. The conventions you’re used to never arrive, leaving you frustrated. But once you’re able to finish the book and see the entire canvas, you realize how good it actually is.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[xx] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: Don’t get down if your latest script was a dud! Your next screenplay could be the one that launches you into the stratosphere. Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow has sold over 1 million copies. But you know how many copies Zevin’s previous book sold? “Young Jane Young,” about a congressional intern who’s publicly shamed for having an affair with her boss (arguably the more marketable concept), sold just 10,000 copies. Just need to find that idea that pops!
