Key themes
- Creative partnership — its intimacy and its limits
- Love that doesn't resolve into romance — and why this is the novel's central argument
- Games as art, and art as a game
About this book
Sam and Sadie meet as children in hospital, reunite as adults and spend thirty years making video games together — through creative intensity, falling out, reconciliation and loss. Zevin's novel is about creative partnership, what art requires of those who make it, and the games people play with each other over the course of a life.
Published in 2022, Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow was on the New York Times bestseller list for over a year and became one of the defining novels of its moment. Zevin based much of the gaming detail on years of research and conversations with game designers.
Discussion questions
- Sam and Sadie's relationship is intensely intimate but never becomes romantically resolved. What is Zevin saying about this form of love — and does the novel endorse it as sufficient?
- The novel spans thirty years and multiple game projects. How does Zevin show creative collaboration ageing — the projects that succeed, the ones that fail, the relationship that bends under pressure?
- Games are the novel's central form of art. What is Zevin claiming for games as an artistic medium — and does the novel convince you?
- The title comes from Macbeth's 'tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow.' How does this allusion function — and what does Shakespeare's meditation on meaninglessness add to a novel about creative making?
- Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow was a word-of-mouth phenomenon. What does it offer readers who are not themselves gamers — and what does it offer those who are?
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