TOMORROW, AND TOMORROW, AND TOMORROW by Gabrielle Zevin ★

That’s it, no more Gabrielle Zevin for Kara. Granted it had been fifteen years since the last book I had read by her. Moreover, both of the books I’ve read have been YA novels. So maybe I could be forgiven for talking myself into trying Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, given the hype it has received. Sometimes the hype is worth it, and I shout, “Why did you all let me sleep on this?”

Today is not one of those days, my friends. I did not enjoy this book, and the only reason I’m not giving it one star is because I am much kinder than twenty-year-old Kara was with her ratings.

Sam Masur is working on a math degree at Harvard when he reconnects with Sadie Green, his onetime friend from childhood in Los Angeles, who is now attending MIT to design video games. Sam and Sadie start working on a video game together, which propels them into a lifelong career. Sam’s roommate, Marx, joins them as the business leg of their tripod. As the sands of time, etc., the three experience the vicissitudes of life, love, and game design. Sam and Sadie quarrel and reconcile, Sam deals with disability, Sadie with sexism, both of them with loss. Marx is pretty much the only tolerable thing about this book.

Now, I do have some words of praise! First, although I’m not really qualified to comment on it, I liked Zevin’s portrayal of disability through Sam and his foot. It feels good to see this foregrounded in a way that shows the complexity of Sam’s condition. He is neither a saint nor a martyr; there is no disability porn here, nor is there a magical moment of Sam becoming a better person. It’s hard to write unsympathetic characters (which is what I found Sam to be) who are also disabled, and I want to emphasize that I found Sam’s unsympathetic nature to be separate from his disabled status. For what it is worth, I thought Sadie is super unsympathetic too.

Oh wait, I am supposed to be compliment still. Damn it. Let me try this again.

Another highlight of Tomorrow, Tomorrow, and Tomorrow is the setting of a video game studio. Again, since I was a baby when most of this stuff happened, I am not the most qualified to comment. Still, I thought the depiction of nineties and early 2000s video game development was spiritually accurate if not factually accurate. Zevin captures the infectious enthusiasm that was the zeitgeist of the industry. These decades were a tipping point when PCs had started to saturate households and their capabilities had improved just enough to really do some amazing things (for the time) with graphics, yet such developments were expensive and time-consuming. The push-pull tension between “video games are art” and “video games are consumer products” feels very real and truthful, and I enjoyed these facets of the plot. That being said, if you thought this book was about video games, you are wrong.

Sam and Sadie’s relationship is the heart of this novel, and I really wanted to love it. Though there are elements of longing, theirs is ultimately a platonic relationship. As an aromantic asexual reader, it’s so valuable for me to see platonic relationships foregrounded as equal to romantic relationships. It feels like Zevin is trying to do that here, albeit in a messy and very unsatisfying way. Which is ultimately why, despite this positive aspect of the book, I can’t really say I enjoyed it.

See, Sam and Sadie suck. They are just terrible people.

I think Zevin knows this. I think she wants us to think they are terrible people but also sympathize with them because, hey, aren’t we all? Isn’t that the point of life, haha, we all hurt each other but we can kiss and makeup and move on?

About the third or fourth time Sam and Sadie had a falling out, I felt like I was watching one of those TV shows where the two leads are stuck in a will-they/won’t-they for seven seasons because writers have forgotten how to write tension into will-they relationships. Only in this case, it’s watching a friendship circle the drain. I get it—sometimes friends fight and don’t talk for years and then reconcile! I am old enough to finally grasp what friendship can be in all its glorious diversity, including the turbulence of decades. But why, Sam? Why, Sadie? You just keep hurting each other like moths drawn to a flame that arms them with chainsaws and then sets them against one another.

But let’s say you’re into chainsaw moth fights. Let’s say you are buying what Zevin is selling with the Sam/Sadie arc. OK, cool.

Can we talk about the writing?

The writing is clunky, and in particular, the sex scenes are just … wow. The best way I could describe it to a friend was that the author, a cis woman, writes sex scenes like a cis man—by which I mean, even when the perspective is focused on a woman’s sexual experience, the scene feels like it’s written by someone who has no idea what a woman’s sexual experience is like. Don’t believe me? I will hit you with a small dose. Brace yourself:

she put her hand between his legs, wrapping her fingers around the cylindrical chamber of blood sponges that was his (and every) penis

Well, I can’t erase that phrase from my mind and now neither can you!

Zevin cheerfully glosses over an incredibly abusive relationship—doesn’t deny it, mind you; Sadie and the others acknowledge it as abusive and it’s actually one of the many bombs that go off in her and Sam’s friendship. But Dov also gets to be smarmy, “haha, yes, I know I am a fuckboi, aren’t I incorrigible?” Similarly, Zevin orchestrates a gun-violence subplot that has all the emotional resonance of a sledgehammer against concrete. Oh, and that casually upbeat reference to “the creation of Israel” hits different in August 2024, and while I wouldn’t go so far as to dunk on this book for being Zionist like some have and don’t know much about Zevin herself, all I can say is … yeah, not a good look.

I am certain the critical defence of all this is simply “that’s the point, Kara.” Zevin doesn’t acknowledge the depth of these moments because this is supposed to be one of those books where “life happens.” It’s all literary and pretentious and shit, like she’s Douglas Coupland mixed with Philip Roth.

And I don’t. Care.

If Zevin is master of anything, it’s banality. Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow is boring. It has all the ingredients of a deep and important book. It wants you to think it’s saying a lot by not saying much at all, hoping you will fill in the blanks yourself rather than realizing there is nothing to read between the lines. But this book is nothing more than a long, empty promise.

Oh look, I talked myself into giving it one star. Is 2009 Kara coming back with a vengeance? Incidentally, this is my 2000th book review published on this website. When I was pondering if I should do something to mark the occasion, maybe pick a particularly special book, it never occurred to me that if I left the book to chance, it would end up being a one-star review. But I guess that is its own kind of special.

If I ever pick up another Gabrielle Zevin novel, please smack it out of my hands, OK?