Welcome back! This month has been much more relaxing than my last few months, so that’s been lovely for me. That being said, I haven’t read much and am only on book 21 of the year. Oh well! I’ve instead been enjoying spending actual time with my husband and doing other fun things. Moving on, this month I’m reviewing Gabrielle Zevin’s latest novel, Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow. This was a contender to be my first review back after hiatus and I wanted to do it as my first book of the year this year as it was chosen as Goodreads’ top fiction book of 2022, but it never worked out for me. So, when my friend Cait asked me to read it I decided to finally get around to it! And to accompany my review, I made a Gone Tomorrow cocktail.
Gone Tomorrow Recipe
2oz Gin
2oz Lemon Juice
1 Cherry Stem
Here Today Recipe*
2oz Vodka*
2oz Lime Juice*
1 Cherry*
*This is an optional cocktail/ingredient.
In a rocks glass with ice, add gin and lemon juice. Stir and add garnish. In a separate rocks glass with ice, add vodka and lime juice. Stir and add garnish. Enjoy!
Well clearly this month’s cocktail is a little different than normal since I made two drinks! One of the video games they make in the novel is Counterpart High, so I decided to play off the idea of counterparts and make a doppelgänger drink. So, I made a traditional Gone Tomorrow and then made a counterpart cocktail that I called a Here Today. Since I didn’t change the ingredients of these drinks there’s not much to say other than they’re strong!
If you don’t want to make two cocktails, I also debated adding maple syrup to the Gone Tomorrow as a reference to Mapleword in the game. So, this month you’re getting three cocktail options for the price of one! Adding maple syrup to the Gone Tomorrow added a little more sweetness as it’s essentially a simple syrup substitute. And, in my opinion, this balanced out the flavours nicely and made the drink less strong and more palatable for me. So, let me know if you try one (or all) of the drinks!
Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow Synopsis
(from book cover)
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.
These friends, intimates since childhood, borrow money, beg favors, and, before even graduating college, they have created their first blockbuster, Ichigo. Overnight, the world is theirs. 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.
Review
“Life is very long, unless it is not.”
Well, this year’s been a bit all over the place when it comes to reviews. We’ve had some high hits and we’ve had some hard misses. Luckily, we’ve had more positives, but we’ve unfortunately got another miss to add to the tally. I’ll be honest, I was worried going into this novel as last time I read a Goodreads’ novel of the year I didn’t like it. And after this one, I probably won’t be trying one again unless I feel confident about it. So, that being said let’s get into it.
I am going to start with positives because, frankly, there are very few. Sections 2 and 3 were fantastic. They are pretty much the only reason Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow got 2 stars. Well, those sections and Marx. I’m not sure if it’s because these sections were less pretentious, or if it’s that I found them to contain the most interesting parts of the story. But either way, I understood why people love this novel when I read those sections. Because truly the writing is extremely good. It just doesn’t work for me personally.
As mentioned above, Marx is another big positive in this novel. His character was, for me, the most interesting and complex. While Sadie and Sam are complex in their own way they’re also one-dimensional. And I won’t go so far to say that Marx was multi-dimensional, but compared to Sadie and Sam he at least felt like he had substance. My final positive notes are about the video game side of the story. One, I did want to play the video games they made and I wish they were real. And two, the book did shoutout Harvest Moon on Gameboy as a great game and I loved that game as a child (and still do), so that gained the novel another 0.001 points with me.
Unfortunately, it is now time to move on to the negatives of Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow. First and foremost, it is extremely pretentious. It would be one thing if Sadie and Sam were horrible, which they are, but the narration itself is painfully pretentious. The first note I wrote for this story is, “the narration and dialogue sound like AI scoured Reddit and wrote what it thought people actually speak and think like.” And I understand that Sadie and Sam are extremely smart people, but no one speaks like that. Never in my life have I heard people use words like “quixotic” or “verisimilitude” when casually speaking to someone. There was even a word used multiple times in dialogue that I, someone with a BA in English, have never seen or heard before, but that an average (not genius) character in the novel knew immediately. Please.
To further emphasize this, at one point the narrator or Sam, I honestly can’t remember which, mentions a list of drinks that every college-age girl drinks. And I’m sorry, but as someone who was once a college-age girl and who also worked in restaurants for over 10 years the fact that a vodka cranberry wasn’t on that list but a White Russian and a Seven and Seven were is truly shocking and almost laughable, honestly. I just felt that for a story so deeply focused on character it lacked a real human quality to it. Again, it felt robotic. And all the constant “look how smart I am and all the big words I know” vibes gave me the feeling of reading someone’s thesis and not a novel.
Moving past the pretentiousness, the characters fell so flat for me. Again, for a story focused more on character than plot I was surprised with how little I cared for the characters. I didn’t care what was happening to them nor will I remember them in years to come. I understand that many of the characters in the novel, including our two mains, are not necessarily supposed to be liked but I should still be interested in their story. For instance, there is a clear section that is meant to elicit emotion from the reader and I didn’t even bat an eye. And I cry in almost every book I read, so that’s saying something.
As mentioned above, I found Sam and Sadie one-dimensional. We get insight into their personalities and why they do the things they do, but none of it felt deep. Looking back, I pretty much can’t remember anything about Sam other than he is smart and socially awkward. And Sadie I felt had a lot of potential at the start, but throughout the novel I felt that she became a caricature of herself and gained no real substance. Maybe I just couldn’t connect with or understand these characters in the way the reader is supposed to, but I also expected more development in this area for this novel.
On the Sam and Sadie note, my next negative is about the romance side of the story. It was unnecessary and detracted a lot from the novel. I genuinely do not understand why Zevin included a romantic element between Sadie and Sam. It felt like it was almost as an afterthought as it didn’t add anything to the novel. Everything that happened makes complete sense for two people who love each other deeply as friends and it didn’t need to be romantic for the love between them to unfold the way it did. And this, unfortunately, brought me out of the story a lot as it didn’t feel natural or believable.
On that same note, a lot of the novel felt like a soap opera. Whenever relationships were at the forefront of the story I could only think about how those scenes could easily be in The Days of Our Lives. Which again furthered the lack of human feeling in this story. For example, 90% of the tension in this novel comes from the good ol’ romcom miscommunication trope. And as readers of my reviews will know, I do forgive this trope from time to time but it took so much away from this novel. It was not believable with these characters, it was infuriating, and I genuinely rolled my eyes a few times.
As you can see, I had a lot of problems with this novel and most of those come down to how much they brought me out of the story or detracted from the good elements. These were mainly things that just didn’t feel believable or necessary for the story. Such as, references made in the 90s and 2000s that would make no sense to people living in those times as they’re things more commonly known now. Or random mentions of hot button issues, for example one line about 9/11 for literally no reason. And being brought out of the story so many times in so many different ways was really disappointing.
My final thought on Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow is that it’s not for me. However, I was intrigued by the numerous allusions to other works of literature (Shakespeare, Murakami, etc.) and I think I would have really enjoyed discussing and dissecting this novel in a university course. So, even though I wasn’t a fan I understand why so many people are. Zevin has clear talent and wrote a novel that people love and this is just my very subjective opinion. Will I be recommending this novel to everyone? No. Will I recommend it to someone I think would appreciate it? Maybe. And as always, I absolutely recommend one or all of the cocktails!
My Rating:
Thanks for reading! And, if you read the book or try the cocktail let me know in a comment or on Instagram. Also, if you haven’t yet read my previous reviews, I recommend reading Yellowface, Sea of Tranquility, and The Atlas Six if you liked this one!
Teghann
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