Summary
Sam and Sadie meet as children in a hospital, bonded by Mario Bros. and mutual loneliness, then lose touch, then find each other again in their twenties at Harvard and MIT. They make a video game together. It becomes a phenomenon. They spend the next thirty years making games, fighting, grieving, almost getting together romantically but mostly not, and building something that turns out to be the defining work of both their lives. The title comes from Macbeth, and Zevin means it: this is a novel about time running out, about what we make before we go.
The novel is a love story with video games as its medium, but it is more precisely a novel about collaborative creation and what it does to the people doing it. Sam and Sadie's relationship resists easy categorization — it is not quite friendship, not quite romance, not quite partnership, but something that encompasses all three and is destroyed and rebuilt multiple times. Zevin is interested in the particular intimacy of making something together: how it bonds and how it suffocates, how the work becomes a third party in the relationship with claims of its own.
Zevin writes at a literary altitude that Reid and most contemporary popular fiction do not attempt. The prose is careful and occasionally beautiful. The novel moves across three decades and multiple cities, and it handles time with confidence — years compress and expand based on what they contain rather than following a chronological drumbeat. The video game sequences are written with genuine understanding of game design, not as decoration but as character revelation. Macbeth, Kabuki theater, MIT's Infinite Corridor, the AIDS crisis, the dot-com crash: the novel's world is wide.
This is one of the best American novels of 2022, and the comparison points are the kind of books that last. It asks genuinely difficult questions about the relationship between love and work, about whether two people who are necessary to each other can also be toxic to each other, and about what it means to make something beautiful in a life that is finite. Readers who want propulsive pacing and clear emotional resolution will find it demanding. Everyone else should read it.
Talk to Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow like its author wrote you back.
Get the ideas that fit your life — not generic summaries.
- Chat with the book
- Audiobook-style main ideas
- Adapts to your life and goals
- Helps you take action
Key takeaways
- 1.
The deepest love story in the novel is not romantic — it is the love of two people for the work they make together, and what that work costs them.
- 2.
Collaboration requires a specific kind of trust that is both more durable and more fragile than romantic love; the novel shows both sides.
- 3.
Video games are treated as a serious art form throughout, and Zevin makes that case convincingly by showing the creative decisions behind Sam and Sadie's best work.
- 4.
Grief accumulates across the novel — characters lose parents, friends, and versions of themselves — and Zevin refuses to resolve it or contain it.
- 5.
The title's Macbeth reference is not decorative: the novel is about time running out and the question of what, if anything, we leave behind.
- 6.
Sam's disability and its consequences are woven into his creative psychology in ways that avoid both inspiration-porn and erasure.
- 7.
The question of whether Sam and Sadie should have been together romantically is deliberately left open, and the novel argues that the question itself may be wrong.
- 8.
Making something — a game, a novel, anything — is shown as both the best and worst way to understand another person.
Discussion questions
Use these on your own, with a book club, or as chat starters in Superbook.
- 1.
The novel resists resolving whether Sam and Sadie should have been together. Did you find that restraint satisfying or withholding?
- 2.
Zevin uses video games as her medium the way earlier novelists used painting or music. Did the games-as-art argument land for you, or did it require you to take that on faith?
- 3.
Sam and Sadie hurt each other repeatedly over thirty years without it ending the relationship permanently. What keeps them returning?
- 4.
The novel spans decades but feels intimate throughout. How does Zevin manage that compression without losing character continuity?
- 5.
Marx — Sam's roommate and eventual partner in the studio — is a quietly crucial character. What does his presence give the novel that would be missing without him?
- 6.
The AIDS crisis, the dot-com crash, and other historical events pass through the novel without becoming plot drivers. Is that restraint or avoidance?
- 7.
Sadie carries a significant secret for part of the novel. When it's revealed, did your sympathy for her change?
- 8.
The Macbeth reference runs through the novel's title and its themes. If you know the play, how does it deepen the reading? If you don't, does the novel stand alone?
- 9.
Sam's relationship with pain and his disability shape his creative work. Did the novel handle that connection honestly, or did it edge toward making disability a source of artistic depth?
- 10.
Compared to Daisy Jones & The Six — another novel about creative partnership — where does Tomorrow land harder in its understanding of what making things together does to people?
- 11.
The ending is not happy in a conventional sense but feels complete. Did it earn that feeling?
- 12.
The novel is set primarily in the game industry of the 1990s-2010s. Did the period detail feel nostalgic, or did it serve the story?
Themes
Frequently asked questions
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Do I need to know about video games to enjoy Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow?
No. Zevin explains enough about game design that the technical passages are legible to non-gamers. The games function as a window into character rather than a subject in themselves. That said, readers who have spent time in the games of the 1990s will recognize the texture of what she describes.
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Is the novel hard to read?
It is long and moves slowly in places. The prose is literary and occasionally demands attention. It is not difficult in the way of Ulysses or Infinite Jest, but it asks more of the reader than most contemporary bestsellers. Give it a hundred pages before deciding.
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Is this a love story?
Yes, but not a romantic one in the conventional sense. The love between Sam and Sadie is the center of the novel, but Zevin deliberately refuses to resolve it as a will-they-won't-they plot. If you need the love story to end in a relationship, you may find the ending unsatisfying.
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Why did Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow become such a phenomenon?
It arrived at the intersection of literary ambition and accessible subject matter. The games-as-nostalgia angle brought in readers who might not otherwise pick up literary fiction, and the quality kept them. The friendship-as-love-story resonated with readers tired of conventional romantic plots.
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Who shouldn't read this book?
Readers who want plot-driven fiction with a clear resolution. The novel is episodic and emotionally diffuse by design. It accumulates meaning rather than building to a climax, which some readers experience as loose and others as profound.
