The Difference Between YA Fiction & Adult Fiction

I blow hot and cold on Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow.

The subject matter is interesting to me: I play video games. I’m the only person I know in my age cohort who does. That doesn’t mean I’m the only 70-year-old who plays video games, of course; just that I don’t know any other 70-year-olds who play video games.

Video games are so much more immersive than movies or television.

Also, you can’t fast-forward through them.

I foresee a day in which they become all humans’ primary escapist entertainment of choice—pending that technological advance in which you can download your consciousness in some way, shape, or form into actual gameplay.

My issues with Tomorrow are two:

(1) It’s written like a YA novel. Simple sentence structures; subject->verb->object. This is the difference between YA fiction and so-called “adult” fiction, by the way—not subject matter but sentence structure.

This is a deliberate and very smart choice by Zevin, of course: It expands her readership. Most readers do not like grappling with complicated sentence structures, which is why Tomorrow is gonna sell a lot more copies than Candy House, even though Candy House is the greater book.

Personally, though, I’m a sucker for complicated sentence structures.

(2) I hate its main characters. Hate! In terms of the novel’s chronology, Sam and Sadie, the novel’s two protagonists, are GenXers, but they lack that GenX irony and present more like (ugh!) pious Millennials.

I like GenXers. I ❤️LUV❤️ irony!

I don’t like Millennials. Not only are they preachy and pious, they are also strident and humorless and remarkably obtuse when it comes to subtext.

For a book about playing (which is what gaming essentially is, right?), Tomorrow is singularly humorless. There’s a certain flatness to it. I can practically see Zevin implanting the MacBeth references in the text on, say, her fourth rewrite; they don’t feel organic.

Anyway, I am determined to finish it. Though I keep putting it down. It’s not a book I can immerse myself in. Maybe if it was a video game…

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Of course, I really shouldn’t be immersing myself in anything on account of I have a staggering amount of work I should be doing.

I’m behind in everything.

Lew actually texted me last night demanding to know whether I’d received his Christmas presents yet, and I have, but I haven’t opened them: They are lying fully wrapped in the midden of junk that is rapidly developing in the middle of my bedroom.

I have no idea why I haven’t opened them, and I am usually very good about sending thank you notes promptly, so WTF, right?

Must. Do. That. Today!

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I suppose the deal is that having lain off the gummies, I am now feeling the full punch of Seasonal Affective Disorder. Maybe even there’s some kind of rebound effect since, for the most part, I managed to stave the SAD off so successfully these past two months.

I don’t feel depressed so much as I feel mean.

And then I feel ashamed of myself for feeling mean.

I’d love to be strong enough to embrace my inner meanness!

But meanness is one of those qualities that get you shunned by the collective plus, every time I get really into the meanie groove, I am besieged with mental images of the people I’m being mean to as small, helpless babies struggling with tragedies I can’t ever guess.

So, you know. A rigged game.