Book notes: Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin

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Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow: A Novel by Gabrielle Zevin

Synopsis:

“On a bitter-cold day, in the December of his junior year at Harvard, Sam Masur exits a subway car and sees, amid the hordes of people waiting on the platform, Sadie Green. He calls her name. For a moment, she pretends she hasn’t heard him, but then, she turns, and a game begins: a legendary collaboration that will launch them to stardom.

They borrow money, beg favors, and, before even graduating college, they have created their first blockbuster, Ichigo: a game where players can escape the confines of a body and the betrayals of a heart, and where death means nothing more than a chance to restart and play again. This is the story of the perfect worlds Sam and Sadie build, the imperfect world they live in, and of everything that comes after success: Money. Fame. Duplicity. Tragedy.

Spanning thirty years, from Cambridge, Massachusetts, to Venice Beach, California, and lands in between and far beyond, Gabrielle Zevin’s Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow is a dazzling and intricately imagined novel that examines the multifarious nature of identity, games as artform, technology and the human experience, disability, failure, the redemptive possibilities in play, and above all, our need to connect: to be loved and to love. Yes, it is a love story, but it is not one you have read before.” -Audible

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Opening thoughts:

I’m not sure what to expect with this book but it has a lot of good reviews and the synopsis seems very interesting! I believe I saw the cover of this book while browsing in a bookstore, and then put it on my wishlist.

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Key notes:

Part One: Sick Kids

Chapter 1

• Sam bumped into Sadie Green, a fellow nerd from school whom he loved but she was out of reach in more ways than one
• Sadie and Sam met in the hospital after Sam’s car accident, and Sadie was there for her sister who had cancer
• Sam’s grandparents are Korean and own a restaurant in K-Town LA
• Sadie was told that she was the first person Sam talked to in a long time since being in the hospital
  • He then started making mazes for her but told others it was his first foray into designing games
  • To design a game is to imagine the person who would eventually play it
• Sadie’s grandmother Freida was from Germany and a real estate tycoon
  • She warned Sadie that if Sam finds out she’s hanging out with him as a charity because the nurses asked, Sam could get hurt because he thinks they’re friends
• Their friendship ended at the 609 hours logged in the hospital timesheet when Sam found out about it

Chapter 3

• She soon developed an intimate relationship with her gaming professor and learned even more from him
• Eventually, he told her that he was technically married but supposedly separated, and his wife didn’t know about her
• It was Sadie’s sister Alice who spilled the beans about the community service hours she was getting for visiting Sam, though Sadie tried her best to hide it and not bring it up
• Dov, the professor she was having an affair with, broke up with her to make it work with his wife
  • But she tried her best to play it cool and not burn the bridge as she might run into him again in her future career
• They had dinner and she played the unreleased Metal Gear Solid
  • They had sex one last time before she left and gave him back his key

Chapter 4

• His grandparents accepted the invitation to Sadie’s bar mitzvah for Sam and framed the maze he made for her as a gift
  • But he was still hesitant to go
• Marx was Sam’s college roommate who was very kind and generous to him without appearing to be
• Marx life’s had been filled with such abundance that he found it natural to care for those around him, and his kindness cost him next to nothing
• Sam took Marx’s advice and came over to Sadie’s just to be there for her
  • He also was surprised that his grandparents were right about Sadie liking his maze gift 
• Sadie asked Sam to make a vow that they’ll remain friends, forgive each other, and never not talk to each other for 6 years like they had done

Part Two: Influences

Chapter 1

• Sam had learned to tolerate the sometimes painful present by living in the future
• Sadie recounted how Sam asked her to create a game together that summer at this glass flowers exhibit

Chapter 2

• There is a time for any fledgling artist when one’s taste exceeds one’s abilities
  • The only way to get through this period is to make things anyway
• Sam believed that the key to being a good thief was utter brazenness
• Sam didn’t discuss with Sadie that Marx was essentially a producer on the game because he was lending them his apartment to use
• Sam was half-Jewish and half-Korean
• Sam’s father was George Mazer, and they didn’t really have a close bond
• George and Sam’s mom Anna only dated for 6 weeks, and then 6 weeks later found out she was pregnant

Chapter 3

• Marx greatly helped them out financially and in many other ways, small and big
• Marx’s organizational help allowed them to finish 6 of 15 levels by August

Chapter 4

• Dov became a producer on the game because they needed to use his game engine

Chapter 5

• They finished Ichigo in 6 months, and almost a year to the day when they came back into each other’s lives
• The woman who jumped off a building in front of Sam and his mother back in New York when he was 9 was also an Asian woman named Anna Lee

Chapter 6

• Sam went off the grid for over a day because he slipped and broke his ankle and needed surgery for his foot
  • However, the first playthrough by Marx was a success
• Dov was ecstatic about Ichigo and had a lot of big plans for it after he played it through

Part Three: Unfair Games

Chapter 1

• All three of them took credit for the name Unfair Games but nobody could verify who actually came up with it

Chapter 2

• They got two great offers: one was less money but more creative freedom, and the other was a lot more money but less freedom and demanded a sequel
  • Sam persuaded Sadie to go with the bigger offer because he needed the money, especially with his medical bills and student loans
  • Afterward, Sam became the face of Ichigo
• Sam fell into the role of doing promotions which he was good at, and Sadie was still figuring out herself as a female game designer in the industry

Chapter 3

• Ichigo 2 came out a year after the 1st one and sold modestly more than the original, mostly because of the original’s reputation

Chapter 4

• Sadie came up with the idea for the game Both Sides the night Sam went missing
• She thought about how this reality and life you lived comprised of the choices you made, and how another life is filled with the choices you didn’t make, and sometimes that other life feels just as real, falling down a rabbit hole with a different version of yourself
• The game Sadie thought of was where you jumped back and forth between two different worlds/games with their own unique styles
• Although it seemed glamorous, promoting the games on tour was a lot of hard work for Sam and he knew it needed to be done
  • But what he really loved was being alone with Sadie and filling a slate with her grand ideas

Reader’s note: “Returning to the city of one’s birth always felt like retreat” was something both Sam and Sadie said as the reason why they didn’t want to go back to LA. I relate to this quote so much because I feel the same way 

• Zoe advised Marx that the best way to get them all to California was to convince Sadie it was best for Sam and his health, and convince Sam it was best for Sadie to break with Dov since all she needs is an excuse
  • They would do anything for each other

Chapter 5

Reader’s note: I really hate this relationship Sadie and Dov have. He’s so controlling and abusive, and she annoyingly just goes along with it. I’m hoping when they move and they’re finally broken up, that he’ll be finally gone from the picture

• Sadie escorted Sam to the hospital the night before his surgery and they were nostalgic together
  • He was relieved his foot issues would finally be over with, but also grateful because it led them to meeting
• Marx didn’t understand Sam’s hatred for Sadie at that period in their lives
  • Marx noted that nobody spends 600+ hours doing something for community service, but because of love
  • Sam realized this and knew he more than loved Sadie though he could never say it
• Sam knew that everyone made up compelling reasons to move to CA
  • But in reality, they all did it for him
• After they moved back to LA, Anna eventually found work as a game show spokesmodel which was beneath her but it paid decently to support her and Sam
• After making it on the game show, she became a local celebrity in Ktown 
• While her parents wanted to keep her humble and said she wasn’t the most beautiful woman in Ktown like the billboard said, 12-year-old Sam says she was the most beautiful woman in the world

Reader’s note: Damn, this one got to me. Random moments like this in the story keep tugging at my heartstrings

• Sam and Anna were in a car accident in Hollywood Hills when an oncoming car ran into them. They were parked after almost hitting a coyote. That accident was what caused his foot injury and took his mom’s life

Reader’s note: Damn. So tragic. This one took me out T_T 

Chapter 6

Part Four: Both Sides

1A

1B

2A

2B

• For this game, they decided to divide the labor and would work on each game separately
  • Sam was well-suited to build the hospital world in Mapletown for Alice Ma (the main character) because he was so familiar with being in hospitals
• Mapletown was a story about Sam’s pain in the present and past and would be his most personal game
  • Marx did the first play-through of the 1st level and thought it was brilliant

3A

• Sam thought he would recover quickly, but after the surgery, he would have bouts of phantom limb pain that was very debilitating
• This pain led him to finding an apartment further from work but closer to the hospital and his grandparents
• Sam’s superpower had been to deal with pain, but this was on another level
  • Eventually, it decreased but had a toll on him physically and mentally

3B

4A

• He went on a date with Lola, a high school friend who he briefly dated and lost his virginity to
  • He’s only ever had four partners but wasn’t too fond of sex
• He missed Sadie and longed for the intimacy they had back in Marx’s apartment. But he sensed there was something off between them

4B

• Sadie felt like during the process, Sam had been disengaged and kept conceding
  • Ultimately, his work on his side exceeded her expectations and she loved it
• Zoe, Sadie, and Marx shared a special moment while they were celebrating and in ecstasy
  • Zoe made the two of them kiss and they said it felt like kissing siblings, though Sadie just told that lie because it felt natural

5A

• The reviews for Both Sides ranged from mixed to bad

5B

Reader’s note: Wow, I hate Sadie right now. She’s blaming Sam for all of her pent-up insecurities and resentment toward him. In her opinion, she feels like Sam’s worst transgression was he made her get back together with Dov. But in reality, it’s Sadie’s own fault for her decision to start and continue the relationship. It’s so childish of her to not own up to her choosing to be with Dov. And now she’s unloading on her best friend who sacrificed so much for them. She didn’t know all the pain he’s been through for her and the game

• Sadie admitted that she got an abortion right after she broke up with Dov for the first time

Part Five: Pivots

Chapter 1

• Counterpart High was their next game and a commercial success
  • The two designers were excited to start on a sequel
• Sadie was happy with the success of the game and for the two designers who were also lovers
  • She’s thought about being with Sam but he was always so guarded that it was hard to get in
• Dov’s advice to Sadie on how to deal with a public failure was to get back to work and take advantage of the quiet time to get better

Reader’s note: Here, Alice mentioned to Sadie over lunch that she loves the Mapletown side of the game and was honored by all of the references to her. Sadie admitted that it was mostly Sam’s decision. Damn, this part took me out too. All these tropes of love, sacrifice, and paying tribute to those who mean so much to us really touch me emotionally

Chapter 2

• Sadie ended up going to Tokyo with Marx for his business trip and to visit his family after he and Zoe broke up
• Life wasn’t a destination, but a journey of passing through gates. A doorway and possibility of going to another world
• They visit Marx’s mother who says he and Sadie would make a good couple, but they both try to avoid the subject

Reader’s note: Oh gosh I really REALLY hope they don’t put Sadie and Marx together. I hate how Sadie keeps mixing her personal/romantic life with business and it would ruin the dynamic of the trio. It would be best if they both saw the opportunity but still chose to be platonic for the good of the group

Reader’s note: I hate this so much, and Sadie keeps irritating me at every turn. Marx’s high school friend Midori told her to never sleep with Marx, and then she decided to do it anyway. Why does she keep making these terrible decisions??

Chapter 3

• They finally created the Mapleworld MMORPG version of the Both Sides game
• Sam caught Sadie and Marx together and knew they had been together for some time, and ran through the entire scenario of how their lives would be different because of it
• Tuesday was a wounded dog he found and adopted. She was always mistaken for a coyote
• Sam’s grandpa told him how the most successful people are most able to change their mindsets and can pivot

Part Six: Marriages

Chapter 1

• Mapleworld was the soft, idealistic town people wanted and needed, and Mayor Mazer was one of the top-recognized faces/brands of the time

Chapter 2

• Sadie wanted to tell Sam about their relationship but Marx was hesitant and resistant, which seemed very out of character
  • He felt like Sam would take it hard
• Sadie wanted to make a dark theater game, but Sam hated the idea
  • Marx sided with Sadie, but Sam mentioned it was simply just the worst sides of her coming out
• Sadie and Marx bought a house together

Chapter 3

• Simon and Ant wanted to get married in SF, so Marx, Sadie, and Sam went with them
• Sadie proposed the idea of adding marriages to Mapleworld
  • Even though a lot of people loved it, there were a lot of people who protested and hated Sam for it as he was the face of Mapleworld
• Sam would use this as a way to make more statements about good governance. Plus the publicity was good for the game overall, even despite being controversial 

Chapter 4

• Sadie found out she was pregnant during her and Sam’s promotional tour for Master of the Revels

Chapter 5

Part Seven: The NPC

• An active shooter terrorist came to Unfair Games while Sam and Sadie were out, and Marx was prepared to confront them
• Marx wakes up in the hospital and recalls some details. He knew he was in a medically induced coma
  • He was apparently shot 3 times
• There were two young men who came to the office to shoot Mazer, but Marx managed to stall them so the employees could evacuate
  • Josh, the aggressive shooter, shot Ant and Marx before shooting himself
• Sam finally met Marx’s mom, who was Korean but she went by the American name Anna, and her maiden name was Lee
  • Sam was surprised that Marx never mentioned their mothers had the same name
• Marx knew about Sam’s mother’s name a long time ago and figured it was fate. It was then he decided to be Sam’s brother from then on
• Sadie tells Marx that Master of the Revels is the bestselling game in America, but she thinks it is just out of pity
  • Marx thinks otherwise
• Zoe also visited him in the hospital. Marx thought that the way to turn an ex-lover into a friend is to never stop loving them
  • It’s to acknowledge that love is both a constant and a variable at the same time 

Part Eight: Our Infinite Days

Chapter 1

• Sam asked his grandmother how they got over his mother’s death
  • She said they just continued to live their lives and sometimes would talk to Anna in her mind as she knew her daughter very well 

Chapter 2

• Sam finally visited the office as he needed to take the helm of the company and fill the role Marx played since Sadie was unable to and not as accustomed to grief as Sam

Chapter 3

• Sam had to come over to her house to get Sadie to finally finish the Revels expansion pack
  • Ultimately, it shipped on time before she gave birth

Chapter 4

• Naomi Watanabe-Green arrived exactly on time like the game her mother had been working on
• Despite his own pain, he ran the company and helped Sadie where he could
  • He even checked in on her through Alice

Chapter 5

• They threw a party to celebrate the launch of Counterpart High 4

Chapter 6

• Sam met with the couple and ultimately they came in to start work on their new game Our Infinite Days
• Long ago, Marx suggested the company be named Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow which was a reference to a famous Shakespeare speech
• Sam starts to design a game by himself after deciding to with the help of his imaginary Sadie and being inspired by Oregon Trail

Part Nine: Pioneers

• Emily Marx was a person in a game who was also pregnant and decided to marry her Go partner in-game
• Emily / Sadie figured out that her wife Deadalous was actually Sam
  • Pioneers was a period extension of Mapleworld, and he made it look like Oregon Trail because he knew she’d like it
  • And their son was named Ludus Quintous which meant “fifth game” 
• Emily decided to leave Pioneers permanently and the town of Friendship through a ceremony available in-game

Part Ten: Freights and Grooves

Chapter 1

• Sadie met up with Dov for brunch and he gave her the advice to get over herself and continue making games with Sam
• Dov mentioned how Sam was a romantic kid for building a world for someone

Chapter 2

• Sadie was teaching the advanced gaming class she had taken 16 years prior, and taught the class her way
• Sadie realized that when she made Ichigo, she willed herself to be great
  • Art doesn’t typically get made by happy people
• A year and a half after quitting Pioneers, she finally felt empathy for Sam and all he’s done for her and their company, despite feeling so alone and also losing his friend
• Sadie left a message for Sam and gave condolences about his grandfathers passing

Chapter 3

• Sam always believed it was better to show love than to say it
  • But now, he realized you should say it as much as you can if you mean it because why not? 
• Sam and Sadie finally spoke again since his grandpa left the Donkey Kong machine to Sadie, and they had to figure out shipping

Chapter 4

• They got a proposal from a young gaming company to work on an Ichigo 3
• Sam and Sadie spent time together in NY
  • At the airport, they finally told each other that they loved each other and she asked him to look over a game she was working on

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Closing thoughts:

First off, I really enjoyed this book. One of my favorite things about this book is the premise: two childhood friends/”soulmates” who share a mutual love of video games start a company together in order to make an impact on the world. Along the way, they discover a lot about love, tragedy, purpose, and navigating everything life throws at them. I thought that the look into building a videogame company was exciting and it was interesting seeing their company grow alongside their relationship, as well as with others in their company.

With that being said, I had a lot of qualms regarding the storytelling and the characters. Plot-wise, I thought the slow reveal of some important details (like Sam’s tragic backstory involving his mother) was very intriguing and added a lot of depth and emotional impact when we got the reveals when we did. However, sometimes this method was a bit irritating as it felt like the author withheld a lot of important info that would have been helpful to know sooner, and not leave the reader confused. For example, the fact that Sam or Marx was mixed ethnicity or some of the details regarding the backstory between Sam and Sadie. These didn’t need to be hidden and would have given a lot of needed context to the story as it unfolded.

However, the biggest annoyance for me was the decisions that some of the characters kept making. Sam’s selfish decision to close himself off and not open up to his friends about his pain felt very unnecessary. He could have accomplished more and had such a better journey if he had just honest with himself and his friends. Likely, he and Sadie probably would have ended up together. Nonetheless, the character I disliked the most of Sadie, hands down. The stupid decisions she kept making as the story progressed baffled me beyond reason. First off, her decision to keep dating Dov despite how terrible of a person he was, and how she kept making herself a victim and thinking she was powerless to do anything. What’s even worse is when she held a grudge against Sam for a long time just because she thought Sam was trying to get Sadie and Dov back together just to use his game engine. This is a classic example of her not taking responsibility for her own actions, and then ruining her friendship with her longtime friend over her own feelings and speculations which made absolutely no sense.

And then it gets worse when she goes into a slump after Marx dies, then doesn’t even acknowledge how hard Sam is working for the both of them and the company to keep it afloat blames him for the failure of her games, takes him for granted for the entire last 1/3 of the story, and basically doesn’t pull her weight at all. Despite him being in just as much pain, if not having faced more tragedy than her, and yet her trying to make herself the biggest victim.

Another thing that annoyed me was how the author kept making Sadie into someone who was ruled by her emotions (hence the terrible decisions she kept making that put them in bad situations) and also making her think dating Marx was a good idea. It’s like she’s so desperate for validation that she didn’t even try to keep it together for the company, or even support Sam when he was supporting her for so long. And I didn’t like how Marx was so glorified and pretty much got everything he wanted as a privileged guy when Sam ultimately saw very little reward at the end for his hard work and efforts.

Overall, I did enjoy the book, despite all the things I felt went wrong with the story and characters. The premise and some of the plot developments were great, and I really enjoyed following the hardships and struggles of the company, as well as seeing them succeed and achieve milestones. However, I really didn’t like how some of the characters were developed, especially Sadie and her terrible decisions. I think if this book were to have focused on the company and a platonic relationship with everyone with no romance, it would have been much better. Or if the only romance would have been Sam and Sadie, with people like Dov and Marx staying in their own lane, it would have made things less messy.

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One Takeaway / Putting into practice:

Even though there usually aren’t many solid takeaways in fiction novels, this book had a few good ones I thought were profound. My favorite has to be:

• Art doesn’t typically get made by happy people

I feel like this makes sense in a lot of ways because it seems like sad or negative emotions produce a lot of creative energy. In my own life, I’ve found my most creative periods of time were when I was unhappy and struggling with some big emotional issues. It kind of lends itself to the trope of “sad/depressed artist”. However, I think that unhappiness motivates us to create and have the energy to produce something great that others may resonate with regarding their own struggles.

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Nutshell:

Sam and Sadie are two childhood friends who come together by fate and go on a lifelong adventure creating video games together. Along the way, they have to navigate the struggles life throws at them.

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Similar books:

• Ready Player One by Ernest Cline
• Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman
• The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman
• A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles
• How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia by Mohsin Hamid
• The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid
• Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert A Heinlein

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Rating:

3.5/5

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