tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow a novel book review

The alternating P.O.V.s do so much to explain the characters’ interior lives and monologues, and illustrate how stunted Sam and Sadie are as a result of their insecurities. If there’s one thing that some readers might struggle with the novel, it’s that Sam and Sadie come across as fundamentally unlikable, depending on a chapter’s perspective. The novel covers a fair bit of time, as they eventually come to work together and forge a successful, if rocky, professional and personal relationship. Over the course of the book, we learn of Sam and Sadie’s childhood connection and friendship, their break, and their reunion at college. The bulk of the novel is told from their perspectives, with just a few from the perspective of their loyal friend and eventual producer, Marx. Both Sam and Sadie have various issues with which they are grappling - often rooted in similar areas (self-esteem, for example), but born of very different experiences and circumstances.

This is, in so many ways, a novel about the damage that one person’s mental health issues can wreak on those around you. The synopsis had caught my attention, and what I found was an interesting, nuanced, and thoughtful examination of friendship, jealousy, and misperception. Gabrielle Zevin’s latest novel has been the recipient of a fair amount of pre-publication buzz, so I was very happy to received a review copy a little while back. Yes, it is a love story, but it is not one you have read before.

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, disability, failure, the redemptive possibilities in play, and above all, our need to connect: to be loved and to love. Not even twenty-five years old, Sam and Sadie are brilliant, successful, and rich, but these qualities won’t protect them from their own creative ambitions or the betrayals of their hearts. These friends, intimates since childhood, borrow money, beg favors, and, before even graduating college, they have created their first blockbuster, Ichigo. 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. 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. A thought-provoking novel about friendship and our misperceptions of others’ inner lives

Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow a novel book review