"Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow" by Gabrielle Zevin

I'm not a writer for a lot of reasons, including all the obvious ones: talent, skill, ideas, practice, time. Still there's a minor issue that's haunted me for years and that perhaps has also interfered with any writerly aspirations. A fear that leads me to doubt the legitimacy of most anything I write. The fear of being sentimental.

Professionals have reinforced the idea that to be sentimental is an insult. Popular books are "sentimental." Serious books are "unsparing," which is apparently the opposite of "sentimental" and thus a compliment. Think of all the book blurbs claiming such-and-such novel is an "unsparing look at [insert important issue]." In truth, I'm not always completely sure what it means to be "unsparing"--self-deprecation, ungenerous observations, discussion of the taboo?

My fear of sentimentality has not only stalled my writing, but has also meant I'm always on guard for books or movies that are sentimental so that I can rebuff their advances and maintain ironic distance. This is sometimes hard. When I find myself enjoying a book veering into the land of sentimentality, I fear I'm losing credibility as a connoisseur of literature. What is that, a "Live Laugh Love" sign on my wall?! (I do not have one. One has to take some firm stances.)

All of this is a completely unnecessary introduction to Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, a shield on the fact that the book is maybe a little sentimental but I mostly liked it anyway. The novel follows the lives of Sam and Sadie, who are drawn together by video games as children and then go on to create video games together as adults. The novel follows the ups and downs of their relationship over several decades, through love and losses; disability and mental illness; trauma and the mundane. It felt very similar to Michael Chabon's The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay in its style and focus.

I suppose what leads me to call Tomorrow sentimental is that I have little to say about the book itself. It's a sweet story about the power of someone to "play" with--someone who gets the things you get, values the things you value, finds fun in the same activities. I think that's a good message. The novel begins in the '90s, so it has a lot of nostalgic video game callbacks for people from that era. I never gamed, but I still feel a little warmth for the original Donkey Kong. 

There are some elements that irked me. The way it dealt with unexpected death felt cliché and overdone. Zevin titled her book after Shakespeare's most well-known soliloquy, which feels like a bold move, but I'm not sure thematically it did Macbeth justice. 

Still, overall I was drawn to the affection between Sam and Sadie, their admiration for and understanding of each other. Maybe it's not possible to write about deeply loving relationships without being a bit sentimental. I guess that's okay too. I've reached a point in my life where I know I value those more than anything else, so I suppose it's only to be expected that my tastes in literature would reflect it.

Note: This echoes some ideas I brought up in my Verity review, but I chose to plow ahead nonetheless.