MORE THAN A GAME
Friendship, love, ambition, heartbreak and redemption are hardly novel premises for a book. Yet Gabrielle Zevin manages to make them fresh and interesting by setting her story against the backdrop of the video gaming industry. Zevin describes herself as a “lifelong gamer”, and her familiarity with the subject is evident in the way she brings the world of game development alive, from the creative process to the business and technical aspects. However, she never allows this detailing to get in the way of the story or make it inaccessible to readers who know little about gaming. At its heart, this is a deeply human story about relationships, and the gaming world provides a wonderfully unusual setting for it.
The story revolves around three characters – Sam, Sadie and Marx. Sam is intelligent, introspective and often difficult to understand, carrying the physical and emotional scars of an accident that has shaped much of his life. Sadie is fiercely creative, ambitious and independent, but also complicated. Their relationship is the central thread of the book, moving between friendship, professional collaboration and something that neither quite knows how to define. Marx is the more easy-going and emotionally balanced of the three, often providing the glue that holds them together. Their individual journeys and the changing dynamics between them make for a fascinating portrayal of friendship over several decades.
Zevin is an engaging storyteller, with an easy writing style that makes the book extremely readable. She moves effortlessly across the different phases of the protagonists’ lives, while bringing the fictional games to life with considerable imagination. The narrative is also refreshingly inventive, particularly towards the end, when a sort of redemption arc unfolds through the lens of an MMORPG (Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game).
The title is drawn from Macbeth's famous soliloquy, which describes life as a brief and ultimately meaningless passage towards death. I found the choice somewhat puzzling, given that the novel, despite its spectrum of emotions, is ultimately much more hopeful – the idea of starting again and having another opportunity to make things right, as in video games, runs through the book. Nevertheless, an unusual subject, complex characters and some wonderful storytelling make this a thoroughly satisfying read.
Pros: Original setting, memorable characters, inventive storytelling
Cons: The Sam-Sadie dynamics can be weary at times
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