After a long time, I mean a very long time, a book made me say “Wah! That is so beautiful!”
The word beautiful is the perfect word for this wonderful book. Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin is a book that surpasses the mundane feel of reading a book and just made me deeply feel every part of the book. If, me, who is video game handicapped, had this incredible urge to play video games then just wonder how powerful this book is.
You go back to work. You take advantage of the quiet time that a failure allows you. You remind yourself that no one is paying any attention to you and it’s a perfect time for you to sit down in front of your computer and make another game. You try again. You fail better.
At the start, the book just made me go “Hmmm… this is a very high level of English”, the use of words that sound magical was such a treat in this book. Autostereogram was a term I learnt from this book, and the magic is actually there go take a look! Now when books have lines like, “Sadie Miranda Green! You have died of dysentery!” You know it’s a gem of a book.
Sadie and Sam are video game developers, well Sadie is a developer and Sam is an artist but they both are dreamers at the core. The book that starts of with the concept of games, the concept of the story being of love but not of romance, the fact that life sucks and is filled with some of the toughest hardships, the book is not only about video games but it’s about the intricate, honest and raw aspects of life.
Marx, Sadie and Sam’s buddy who turns into something more is one of the most lovable character and God’s above, everything in this book just hits us in the right places based on the character. These three characters take up all the focus of the book, there are other characters in this book too, they are so important for the character development of these three that they just stay in the background.
There are some instances in the book where, I just couldn’t see the pages well because of the tears in my eyes. Every story told, about the past , about the future, about the mixed timelines just hits where it is supposed to hit. The past stories were the highlights on why the characters are just the way they are. These intricately woven stories at the right time make the story all the more rich, intense and beautiful.
Let’s come to one of the best parts of the book, The Video Games! Every game in this book is explained so well with the plot, the background, the making, the engine, the effort, the story, the reason and the mindset, that it made me do a lot of extra research into what I was reading. No matter the new terms, no matter the tech savy terms, the fact that this story was set from the 1990’s and eventually built up from there is very evident.
The fact that Sadie and Sam’s relationship here not being romantic and still being ‘Oh so lovely’ is evident in each and every page. They are talking, not talking, fighting , not fighting etc… the love between them is just there through everything.
Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,
from Macbeth, spoken by Macbeth
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.
The title, the meaning, the play, the details were something that I had absolutely no idea about. The soliloquy is so hopeless in nature that it just makes me so so sad but it has all the makings of being a great title, for this amazing book.
The love seen in this book is so damn precious, so so so damn precious that I could just feel the love radiating off the pages and it was so beautiful to read of a love that wasn’t a romance. The revelations of love at some points in this book were so profound that it made me think about a lot of things.
Why wouldn’t you tell someone you loved them? Once you loved someone, you repeated it until they were tired of hearing it. You said it until it ceased to have meaning. Why not? Of course, you goddamn did.
Sam, Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow
The way the entire book is written, there is a deeper connect as a whole, right from the start to the finish. The way the start is later shadowed at the end with the characters and situations right in the same frequency as the start is such a treat to the heart and soul.
Sam, the stars above, Sam is just one of those characters who just persevered through everything in life. He was so well written with all types of themes of love, grief, hate, jealousy, savageness, care, creativity, intellect, thought, dependency, angst and so much much more. The fact that I could just be him while reading shows how amazingly well this book was written.
The autostereogram, the end where it makes sense, the talk about a close ending, the part about going on, the talk about relating the real world to game engines, the bond that they still have after years and how deep the bond is with respect to game making and idea sharing is such a fabulous note to end the whole book on.
The easy conversations that Sam and Sadie fall into so many times in this book are just some of the most amazing things about this book. Like this example below, the quirky yet smart talks that they have makes the book so much more special on the whole.
I absolutely adored this book very very much. I just fell in love with this book and if and when I re-read it again I will annotate it even more to my hearts content. Everyone must read this book at least once in their long long yet short life!
vcreative 