A Lifetime of Endless, Immaculate Tomorrows: Gabrielle Zevin’s New Novel is a Magnificent Ode to Creativity

“Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow” might be the best book of 2022 so far

All art is a testament to immortality, created in some way by an artist’s desire to be remembered, to leave a mark long after their death. Even performance art, by its nature ephemeral, lives on through documentation and a viewer’s memory.

Video games may be immortality’s most unambiguous fans. If you die in a game, most of the time you can return, albeit without the strength you accumulated over the course of your previous life. It’s this virtue of video games that unites the protagonists of Gabrielle Zevin’s absolutely stunning novel, Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow.

Sadie Green and Sam Masur first meet in a hospital when they’re children, where Sam is receiving extensive treatment after a horrific car accident, while Sadie visits her sister, Alice, who has childhood leukemia. Both Sadie and Sam are, from an early age, acquainted with the looming specter of mortality. The pair unite over hundreds of hours — 609 hours, to be exact — spent playing Super Mario Bros, but after a miscommunication causes a rift between them, Sam and Sadie won’t connect again until they’re in college in…