About Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow

Sam Masur and Sadie Green meet as kids in a hospital game room, lose each other for years, then reconnect in a Cambridge train station and decide to build a video game together. What follows spans three decades of creative partnership — games that succeed spectacularly, games that almost break them, and a relationship that refuses to settle into any category either of them can name. Gabrielle Zevin’s 2022 novel uses the language of game design to examine how we collaborate with the people who know us best, and how love and resentment grow from the same root. It reads fast, hits harder than you expect, and gives book clubs the rare gift of a story where nobody agrees on who was right.

Discussion questions for Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow

Sam and Sadie never become a couple, but their relationship is arguably more intense than most romantic ones in fiction. How would you describe what they are to each other, and did you find the novel’s refusal to name it satisfying or frustrating?
Sadie resents that Sam gets more public credit for their shared work. Where do you think the novel lands on whether her anger is justified — and did your own sympathies shift as you read?
Marx is often described as the “glue” of the trio. What does he actually contribute beyond emotional labour, and is the novel aware of how much it asks of him?
The book is structured around the games Sam and Sadie create. Pick one game — Ichigo, Both Sides, Mapletown, Pioneers — and talk about what it reveals about where their heads were at that point in their lives.
Sam’s disability shapes nearly every interaction he has, but he rarely talks about it directly. How does Zevin handle his pain — does the novel earn its portrayal, or does it use his injury as a narrative device more than a lived reality?
Sadie’s relationship with Dov is introduced early and never fully resolved. What purpose does it serve in the story, and did you want the novel to say more about it?
There’s a moment when Sam tells Sadie that she “doesn’t know what it is to be limited.” Is he right? Where does the power actually sit between them, and does it ever balance out?
The gaming industry in this novel is both a real setting and a metaphor. What is Zevin using games to say about art, ownership, and who gets remembered as the creator?
Marx’s death arrives suddenly and violently. Did the novel prepare you for it, and how did the story’s tone change afterward in a way that worked — or didn’t — for you?
Sam and Sadie both build worlds where the rules are clear and outcomes are earned. How does that impulse connect to the things in their real lives they can’t control?
The title comes from Macbeth’s speech about the meaninglessness of time. By the end, do you think the novel agrees with that reading, or is it arguing the opposite?
Zevin writes about cultural identity — Sam is half-Korean, half-Jewish; Sadie is Jewish and navigating a male-dominated field — without making it the centre of the plot. Did that approach feel deliberate and effective, or did you want more?
The final chapter jumps forward and offers something close to resolution. Did the ending feel earned to you, or did it soften a story that had been unafraid to stay uncomfortable?

Themes in Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow

Creative partnership versus friendship

Sam and Sadie’s relationship lives in the gap between collaborator and friend, and the novel never lets that gap close. Their best work comes from tension — competing visions, unspoken jealousy, the need to prove something to each other. Zevin suggests that the partnerships that produce great art may be fundamentally incompatible with the honesty friendship requires.

Disability and the stories we build around pain

Sam’s crushed foot and chronic pain aren’t metaphors — they dictate what he can do, where he can go, and how people see him. But the novel also shows how Sam uses his disability as a wall, controlling other people’s access to him. The tension between genuine limitation and performed invulnerability is one of the most honest things in the book.

Games as world-building and escapism

Every game Sam and Sadie build reflects a version of the world they wish they lived in — one with fairer rules, clearer stakes, or the ability to start over. Zevin treats game design as a form of autobiography, and the games-within-the-novel become the most reliable map of what her characters actually feel.

Grief and the refusal to let go

After Marx dies, both Sam and Sadie build a game set in his world — literally refusing to let him disappear. The novel treats grief not as a stage to move through but as a creative act, something you keep making and remaking. Whether that’s healing or avoidance is a question the book leaves deliberately open.

Suggested book club format

Length: 416 pages, roughly eight to ten hours of reading.
Session count: Two sessions recommended. Break after Part Two (“Unfair Games”), which lands around page 200 and gives the group time to process the tonal shift before the second half.
Icebreaker: “What’s a creative project — school, work, hobby, anything — where a partnership made the work better and the relationship harder?”
Moderator note: The novel includes a sudden act of violence, chronic pain, and a relationship with a significant age and power gap. Flag these at the start so nobody is caught off guard. The book handles them with restraint, but the discussions they generate can get personal fast.

How a real club read this

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More books like Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow

Yellowface by R.F. Kuang — authorship, theft, and the publishing industry’s appetite for identity as brand. Yellowface discussion guide.
The Midnight Library by Matt Haig — parallel lives and the weight of choices not taken, told through a gentler lens. The Midnight Library discussion guide.
Pachinko by Min Jin Lee — decades of family history shaped by identity, displacement, and what one generation owes the next. Pachinko discussion guide.
Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus — a woman whose brilliance is constantly reframed by the people around her, set against a male-dominated field. Lessons in Chemistry discussion guide.

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