What Came Before: A Guest Post by Gabrielle Zevin
It’s been two years since the initial release of Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin — two years of immersing ourselves in this world of friendship and love, a journey through heartbreak and grief. Gabrielle has penned an exclusive B&N Reads essay reflecting on her career and what this story means to her, down below.
Paperback $19.00
Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow (B&N Exclusive Edition)
Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow (B&N Exclusive Edition)
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Paperback $19.00
Spanning decades and coasts, Zevin’s epic is expertly crafted and deftly realized. An intelligent novel full of friendship, heartbreak, creativity, and love … an instant classic.
Spanning decades and coasts, Zevin’s epic is expertly crafted and deftly realized. An intelligent novel full of friendship, heartbreak, creativity, and love … an instant classic.
I was asked to write a few words about the experience of publishing Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, but to understand what that experience has meant to me, I need to tell you a bit about what came before.
I published my first novel nineteen years ago. Margarettown “failed to meet commercial expectations.” That’s industry speak for “the book flopped.” It has been out of print for over a decade, and its lifetime sales are a fraction of what Tomorrow sells in a week. The first newspaper review of the book was in the Washington Post, and the critic began, “Gabrielle Zevin wants to mess with your mind. But in her first novel, Margarettown, she succeeds mostly at inducing a monster headache.” The second review was in the Fort Lauderdale Sun Sentinel, the first newspaper I ever worked for, the first real job I had, the newspaper of my hometown. That critic said he wanted to throw my book across the room. I’m not kidding. I had nightmares thinking of my high school English teachers reading this review. Poor Margarettown. Poor baby novelist me.
By far, the best thing that happened for Margarettown was that Barnes & Noble picked it for the Discover Great New Writers Program. I felt discovered and honestly, a little great! I had one reading for that book—at a New York City Barnes and Noble about two months after the book published. Maybe twenty-five people came, which prior to 2022, was a very solid turnout for me. I have spoken to a crowd of two. (More than once.) (Can “two” be called a “crowd”?) The audience at that first reading consisted of people I knew, and people who had come inside to beat the oppressive heat of the city in the summer. They would have come for anyone – the air conditioning was the draw. But there was one woman I remember. She was a stranger, and she was listening in the attentive way I have come to associate with the true reader. After the reading, she and I had a brief conversation at the signing table. She was emotional, and she said something about how much the book had meant to her, how seen she had felt by Margarettown. How wonderful it felt to speak to people (person!) in this way. Who cared if all the critics hated the book? The book had meant something to that one woman. I spent the rest of that summer obsessively visiting my book at various Barnes and Nobles. I knew the book had flopped, but if I could see it on a shelf at a Barnes & Noble, I felt like a novelist, a little great.
Elsewhere and The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry were both bestsellers, but it was only with Tomorrow that the audiences began to be filled with people like the woman at the Margarettown reading. Thousands of people have personally come to an event to tell me that I wrote Tomorrow for them, that they’re Sam or Sadie, that they had or are a Marx. I sometimes feel overwhelmed. I want to be able to talk to those people like I spoke to that woman at that first event, to tell them how much it means to me that they have taken these characters, these intelligent fools, into their hearts. But the lines are longer, and they move apace. I’m grateful for all of it.
