Book Club Night Kit

Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow

Gabrielle Zevin

Deep Discussion night

A decades-spanning novel about two collaborators building video games together, Zevin's book uses play as a lens on art, identity, grief, and the strange intimacy of creative partnership.

A Serious Night on Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow

Bring the book, a flagged passage, and an opinion you are willing to defend. We are reading slowly and talking deeply.

Reading level: Moderate Pages: 416

Best for: Clubs that like layered, character-driven literary fiction and arguing about what a book is really 'about'

Discussion

Warm-up

1.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?
2.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?

Digging in

1.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?
2.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?
3.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?
4.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?

Going deep

1.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?
2.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?

On the table & to sip

To eat

Cheese and bread board

Simple, shareable, and easy to graze on so conversation never has to stop

Bowl of clementines

A quiet nod to California and the book's recurring imagery of small, perfect things

Salted dark chocolate squares

Bitter-sweet, like the book; minimal effort, maximal mood

To sip

Black coffee or strong tea (no alcohol)

Late-night studio fuel for a serious talk about ambition and burnout

Dry red wine

Unfussy, contemplative; pour and let the discussion lead

Japanese whisky, neat

A subtle gesture to the book's Hokusai motif; one bottle, small pours