The Folger’s virtual book club, Words, Words, Words continues on Thursday, May 4 with a discussion of Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin. To get ready for the conversation, we’ve compiled some introductory information on this exploration of gaming, grief, and collaboration.
What is Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow about?
From the best-selling author of The Storied Life of A. J. Fikry: 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.
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 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.
Critical Reception
“Delightful and absorbing” —The New York Times
“It’s a big, beautifully written novel about an underexplored topic, that succeeds in being both serious art and immersive entertainment..” —NPR
“Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow is an artfully balanced novel – charming but never saccharine. The world Zevin has created is textured, expansive and, just like those built by her characters, playful..” —The Guardian
“Sure to enchant even those who have never played a video game in their lives, with instant cult status for those who have.” – Kirkus Reviews (starred)
“. . . [S]he’s written a novel that draws any curious reader into the pioneering days of a vast entertainment industry too often scorned by bookworms. And with the depth and sensitivity of a fine fiction writer, she argues for the abiding appeal of the flickering screen.” —The Washington Post
Why did we choose this book?
The Folger Shakespeare Library’s collection explores not only Shakespeare’s life and works, but also the plays’ historical context, source material, critical and performance histories, and the ways in which they inspire and are adapted by contemporary novelists.
Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow explores what it means to collaborate, memorialize, and draw on inspiration to create something. References to Shakespeare performance and early modern history are threaded throughout, connecting contemporary video game design to the artistic world in which Shakespeare operated.
Gaming and grieving with Shakespeare: Gabrielle Zevin’s new novel puts the ghostliness in gameplay
Sophia Richardson explores how Gabrielle Zevin’s new novel about video games, “Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow,” is also a book about Shakespeare.
About the author: Gabrielle Zevin
From her website
Gabrielle Zevin is a New York Times best-selling novelist whose books have been translated into thirty-nine languages.
Her tenth novel, Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, was an instant New York Times Best Seller, a Sunday Times Best Seller, and a selection of the Tonight Show’s Fallon Book Club. Tomorrow was Amazon.com’s #1 Book of the Year, Time Magazine’s #1 Book of the Year, a New York Times Notable Book, and the winner of both the Goodreads Choice Award for Fiction and the Book of the Month Club’s Book of the Year. Following a twenty-five-bidder auction, the feature film rights to Tomorrow were acquired by Temple Hill and Paramount Studios. Zevin is currently writing the screenplay.
The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry also spent many months on the New York Times Best Seller List. A.J. Fikry was honored with the Southern California Independent Booksellers Award for Fiction, the Japan Booksellers’ Prize, and was long listed for the International Dublin Literary Award, among other honors. A.J. Fikry is now a feature film with a screenplay by Zevin. She has also written children’s books, including the award-winning Elsewhere.
She is the screenwriter of Conversations with Other Women (Helena Bonham Carter) for which she received an Independent Spirit Award Nomination for Best First Screenplay. She has occasionally written criticism for the New York Times Book Review and NPR’s All Things Considered, and she began her writing career, at age fourteen, as a music critic for the Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel. Zevin is a graduate of Harvard University. She lives in Los Angeles.
May’s Bookstore Partner
This month, we are excited to partner with Kramers, the first bookstore/café in Washington DC.
In addition to possessing a lively, convivial atmosphere, and a full-service bar, Kramers stages hundreds of book-related events each year, both in the store and elsewhere. From tourists to neighbors, college students to the political elite, there is something for everyone at Kramers! Learn more at kramers.com.
Click here to purchase your copy of Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow
We would like to thank the following organization for its generous support of this program
Join us for an upcoming event
Gallery Talk: Romeo and Juliet on Display
Into the Vault: Books of the 1620s
DIY at the Folger: Printing
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