“What is a game?” Marx said. “It’s tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow. It’s the possibility of infinite rebirth, infinite redemption. The idea that if you keep playing, you could win. No loss is permanent, because nothing is permanent, ever.” [loc. 5678]
Sam Masur and Sadie Green meet, as preteens, at a hospital. Sadie's visiting her sister Alice, who has cancer: Sam hasn't spoken to anyone since the car accident that mangled his foot and killed his mother. All he does is play video games -- but Sadie's a gamer too, and they become best friends. They're apart for a few years because of a misunderstanding, then reconnect as students in Boston, where their creative partnership spawns a best-selling game, Ichigo. They start a gaming company, Unfair Games, with Sadie's wealthy friend Marx. But Sadie and Sam are motivated by different impulses (she's female, white, Jewish and fairly wealthy; he's part-Korean and has always been poor) and driven apart by another stupid misunderstanding lack of communication, as well as that typical late-Nineties sexism in gaming culture. The dynamics of the three protagonists change and change again under the pressures of the real world: and then tragedy strikes.
I related to both Sam and Sadie, though less so to Marx, who I don't think is as developed a character. I too was a woman in tech (though not in the gaming industry) in the Nineties, and sexism was everywhere. Sam has very little privilege compared to Sadie, but he does have the trump card: he's male.
I especially liked the way Zevin depicted the synergy of co-creation -- as Sadie reflects somewhere in the middle of the novel, "There were so many people who could be your lover, but... relatively few people who could move you creatively." Zevin's a playful author, too: she switches viewpoint characters and voices, sets scenes within games, turns random coincidences into plot points, riffs off gaming terminology such as NPC (non-player character), and weaves real-world events into the story. It was Zevin's prose and inventiveness that kept me reading when I got annoyed at Sam and / or Sadie for their appalling miscommunications. In that respect (though not really any other) their relationship reminded me of the kind of romantic novel that's fraught with unspoken explanations, misunderstandings, and faulty assumptions.
There are a lot of unpleasant moments here: car accidents, suicide, homophobia, gun violence, poverty, medical trauma, unethical relationships. But there is also the joy of creation, and the ways in which gaming reflects life, and the surprises (and coincidences) that the real world springs, unscripted, on the novel's protagonists.
Fulfils the ‘Women In STEM’ rubric of the 52 books in 2024 challenge.
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