Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow
In 2023, a friend who's literary (and life) opinions I deeply respect gave me this book as the best book she'd read that year. It took me a bit to get around to reading it.
I appreciated the alt history of the video game era that I lived through, and thought it captured a lot of the grunge of what I understand to be a part of the rise of video games, and did a great job of tapering off as we approach the modern era.
The book has three main characters. None of them are likable. The author does this wonderfully devious thing where she writes these characters, and because narrative transformation is a thing, as readers, we find ourselves deeply relating to them. And then not liking them, and through that, maybe not liking ourselves a little. At once the character is treated poorly, and they do not deserve it, and then, they prove that though the behavior was unjustified at that moment, the perceived offense eventually becomes a real one.
This is not a will they, won't they book, and I appreciated that. I appreciated the very real struggle of two people to understand how they love each other, and how they are loved by each other. Because that's the human struggle we all live.