I Read Gabrielle Zevin’s ‘Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow’.
I think a lot about friendship. Truly, outside of my family in my home, the narrative of my friendships is the thing I think about the most. More than work, more than responsibilities, more than hobbies, more than music. I think about the branching timelines of all of the friendships I’ve had and the ones that I still have, and I examine which causeways broke the forward momentum, which silences were meant as invitations, which full glasses were vessels left half-empty. In Gabrielle Zevin’s Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow we get a high level view of the friendship of two fully developed and realistic characters and the singular character of their friendship. We get the crevasse-deep lows, the humming normal days, the comfortable conversations… and it isn’t until we look at the sum of its parts that we really see the meteoric highs of this friendship. There’s a vast realization that sometimes the most you have ever wanted from a friendship, the real value, the treasure, the spirit-affirming joy, is going to come in the form of its duration and endurance, not its individual peaks.
The book kicks off in the 90s, takes us back to the 80s, and carries with us to what we can assume is the modern day. We can follow this timeline by their age, sure, but the core of this book outside of the frierndships of these characters rests in the video game industry. We talk Super Mario Bros. to Donkey Kong to Kings Quest to Harvest Moon and Everquest. From Call of Duty and Half-Life 2 to Persona, all the big names are dropped. This not only gives us a very shallow sense of the growth of video games as they’ve seen it from within, but also works as a calendar of sorts. When we see the name of a game brought up, that’s almost the only way we know roundabout where we are in terms of history.
The way that video games are integrated into this book is marvelous. We do get an intimate sense of who Sadie and Sam are through this, their very passion, but also as we read further into the descriptions of not only the games themselves, but the scenes, the similarities, and the inspirations of these games, we get a sense of who Zevin is as a person beyond an author. I found that adding very fine and almost barely noticeable details about the things the characters loved about games and characters and animations themselves, we got a sense of what the author adores too. We gain a bit more of the vitae of who’s world we are truly in. Through this authorial intent, we get a way sharper vision of who Sadie is and what she is like, what she reads, what she does in her alone time. We know a more profound level of sadness that Sam feels, and also a more contained sense of his aloofness. By not reducing games to mere releases, by not making a “A Book About People That Like Video Games” and instead writing “A Book About People And Video Games”, there is a far more rich sense of authenticity. There is the magical sense that you know more than you do about the world, a sense of familiarity with things that have gone unmentioned.
In fact, this level of rich detail gives way more life to the games that are created within the book that don’t even exist. Games like Dead Sea, and the Ichigo series, the Love Doppelgangers series, and even Both Sides. These games do not exist, but we know by the use of language and bare description almost what these games play like. What the graphics feel like. What the colors surrounding the atmosphere is. I think the spirit of these games comes through and it’s not at all possible without the author’s true passion bleeding into the pages of the book. Over time, even though the game hasn’t been mentioned in 20, 50, 100 pages, the reader can further build the game of Ichigo by learning the minds and souls of the characters, by getting a more abundant sense of their creative vision as a whole. Fictional games are expanding in the background of our mind as the foreground of the story revolves around nothing but the people involved.
Something special that this book does as well is focus equally on two characters, one boy and one girl, and not rely on romantic entanglements to develop their relationship. This very briefly and sporadically is a “will they/won’t they” but it isn’t done in some emotional tug-of-war, it isn’t measured in a quantity of hearts building up in a tank. We watch the two of them engage with one another on an intimate scale that is able to go beyond the romantic, one that I believe typically can only exist in a special friendship that exists platonically between a boy and a girl [a man and a woman] wherein there is a deeper care for one another than could be nurtured had they been together romantically at all. It’s a profound connection, one that speaks in a language all their own, one that causes the two of them to uplift one another more than anyone else can, and in the other sense, damage each other in a way that’s far more personal than any lover could intend. I don’t think I’ve seen a book do this type of relationship as much justice as this one here, as many of them objectify and magnify “The Friend Zone” or petty envies instead of focusing on the simultaneously more banal and more intense vision of how we feel about these types of friends. Within the heartbreaks and romances that we see these two main characters go through, we also see those through the lens of this character’s other, and by seeing this, we’re shown a far more three dimensional landscape of what these interactions are made of.
Character, I believe, is this book’s strongest aspect and it comes through in waves. For each of the main characters and for two of the secondary characters, there were louder and more exaggerated elements that we see from them that feel overblown or embellished in ways that made those characters at that time feel almost unbearable. Most of these things happen early on in the book (one happens further down the line) and it almost was enough to make me read on with a half-assed attitude about it. This book kept me engaged throughout those doubts and pulled me in again and again with its references to times in people’s lives that are so stupid and robust that they simply must be remembered and adored and romanticized, along with the bolstering of friendships and these characters, always, doing the work that they love. It’s not to say that this book doesn’t have Major Events, but much of this book is told through the interactions that happen in-between, the people that these characters are despite and because of these chapters in their lives and how it affects the relationship that they’ve had with each other, and I absolutely love that. I relate to that. More than any adventure or romance or fiction… I relate to that because I have lived that. I have been this.
When I think again of friendships, often times I think of it in terms of unfair currencies and paltry favors and niceties that one feels they’re owed whether through engagement or activity or intent. I think about all the texts I’ve sent that have gone unreplied or wanly responded to. I think of the plans I’ve put off and delayed and then forgotten. I think of the things I’ve loved that I’ve wanted to share that are eventually held on to until the fun has rotted away and there’s nothing grand or enjoyable to share after all. I think of watching calendar days tick away as I wait for a response or an invitation. And then I think of all of the friendships I’ve had with those who have never made me keep track of any of that. I think of the constants, I think of the steady constellations of people who have been a sure thing, of unremarkably romantic companions that are a signal that can be tuned in at any time in any year on any road. This book shows a friendship that we all should envy and it’s composed of four people over a long life of around 40 years. Instead of spreading wide and broad and trying to capture the entire sea of friends with a net so thin and brittle, I think instead I’ll celebrate the friends who have been there and will be there. I’ll know that with these people, with these true believers, there will always be tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow.
I highly recommend this book!! It isn’t overly deep, its language won’t stun you, its journey won’t give you a biting wanderlust. But its story and its people will inspire you. It will make you believe.
