Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow

Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow follows the lives of two friends, Sam and Sadie. They meet in the hospital as children and bond over playing video games. As college students, they reconnect and decide to start making video games together. The story follows their relationship and the ups and downs of the company they create over the next 30 years. Video games (both the ones they create and others that they play) provide a framework for the book.

There is a fine line that is being walked in this book. Both Sadie and Sam are deeply flawed characters, so much so that at times it is hard to root for them. However, it also makes them seem very real - they have trauma and illness and joy and all the things that make up life. They are at their very best when working creatively together, and their very worst when they have to confront anything of emotional importance. I ended up liking and appreciating the realness, especially since the prose and story-telling is just so pretty in this book!

While gaming is obviously a big part of the book, I don't think you need to be a big gamer to enjoy this. However if you, like me, remember playing The Oregon Trail on the Apple IIe in your school's computer lab then you are probably in the right age range to enjoy many of the nods to games that are in the book.