Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow
Cut along the dashed lines and pass the cards around the table.
The title is borrowed from Macbeth's soliloquy on meaningless time. What expectations did that framing set before you opened the book, and how did the novel push back on them?
Zevin opens in a specific time and place rather than with backstory. What does that structural choice signal about how she wants us to read Sam and Sadie's relationship?
The novel insists on calling what Sam and Sadie do 'work' rather than 'art' or 'play.' How does Zevin complicate the boundaries between those three categories, and is she arguing one is primary?
Games promise the player infinite second chances. How does Zevin use that promise as both metaphor and critique, and where does the metaphor strain or break?
Consider how the book handles Sam's disability and pain, Sadie's gender in the industry, and Marx's racial identity. Is Zevin making an argument about whose suffering gets aestheticized and whose gets erased?
Marx is repeatedly described in terms that flirt with idealization. Is he a fully realized character, a deliberate archetype, or a structural device, and what does your answer say about the novel's moral center?
Critics have split on whether the romantic-but-not-romance arc between Sam and Sadie is the novel's great insight or its great evasion. Which reading do you find more defensible, and what textual evidence supports it?
Zevin uses embedded games, alternate selves, and recursive references to other texts (Shakespeare, Hokusai, Oregon Trail) to layer the narrative. Is this intertextuality doing genuine thematic work, or is it largely decorative? What is she ultimately arguing about authorship and influence?