Once again the Queen comes to mind “Grief is the price we pay for love,” a quote attributed to her in recent weeks. Tomorrow³ is a meditation on love and friendship. We can right the mistakes of our previous “lives.” In our virtual worlds, death is not permanent, we get to try again. The title takes on additional significance when placed against computer games. I would never have expected a book steeped in the history of computer games to provide an apposite observation of the national condition, but we do live in unprecedented times (again). In a week where thousands of people queue for many hours to spend but one minute in the company of the coffin of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, “Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow” feels like a soliloquy for a nation. Tomorrow³, unsurprisingly, leans into the famous quote from Macbeth in which Macbeth meditates on the fleeting nature of life the meaninglessness of existence without his wife by his side. Sat in the darkness of my bedroom, under the weak light of a lamp, I was struck by how the death of someone, whether we know them or not, is cause for reflection. It was late at night when I reached the book’s most tragic moment. Yet, at the same time, there is that oppressive feeling that everything will stay the same. A few days after the death of the Queen, I was reading Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin. The death of Queen Elizabeth II gives the sense that nothing will ever be the same again. It’s been a strange week or so in the UK.
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