Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow
My journey through this book — the everyone-loves-it Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin was ↗️↘️↗️↘️. I wish I could type out more of a parabolic line, but the arrows will have to do. I don’t mean “up and down,” like I liked it and then I didn’t like it. No, I mean that this novel — that uses gaming as a foil to explore friendship, love, grief, and how work and ambition weave into all of those emotions — so beautifully mirrors the heave-ho of a real, offline life.
Mostly, I felt that Tomorrow — which lifts its title from Macbeth — demonstrates how art can be a steadying force in an unsteady world. I’m not a gamer (unless you count Wordle and my new obsession Nonogram…) and I admit there’s something about online/multi-player games that makes me kinda 🤷🏻♀️, but Zevin artfully brings IRL humanity to the forefront — always.
After all, the way Zevin illuminates her characters’ love of games is not so dissimilar to my love of books: playing (reading) for comfort, switching between genres, looking for meaning in plots and character development, source of entertainment, sharing the experience with someone else. (I’m actually expanding on the last one for my newsletter!) As one character tries to articulate after looking at concept art for a new game, “These images make me feel…I don’t know the word. I guess they make me feel.” 👾❤️
originally published on instagram