Early on in Gabrielle Zevin’s Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, one of the trio of lead characters gives a fictional interview to a very real video games publication. The troubled but passionate Samson Mazur tells the interviewer, “There is no more intimate act than play, even sex.” This is an explosive statement, but a perfect one in the context of a novel that treasures the act of play and holds it sacred. In some ways, this is a thesis statement for Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow itself: the novel opening its heart, and showing you what it is truly about.
Video games are seldom treated in literature as a site of emotion, but in Zevin’s work they are the very landscape that the full spectrum of relationships, grief, and love play out in. The world of video games is a surprisingly uncommon location for the modern commercial or literary novel, despite the fact that they have long since evolved from children’s toy or tech curio into a form of entertainment that is so mainstream as to be ordinary.
