Replay

by Ken Grimwood

The below is nothing but spoilers.

This was engrossing for a while, but overall I didn’t love it. The premise is one we’ve all thought of – what would you do if you could live your life over again, knowing all that you know now? Jeff Winston dies of a heart attack at age 43 (?) and immediately wakes up in his dorm room as an 18 year old. Once he realizes where and when he is, he makes a fortune on bets and investments. But he fails to even have a short conversation with Linda, who was his wife before he died – she thinks he’s a liar when he, a twenty-year-old or something, describes his investment company to her.

Anyway, no matter what he does, he dies at around the same time and restarts life over and over. The replays jump forward in time, so he has less and less time with each one, but that’s not much of an issue until toward the end of the book. He has a life of debauchery followed by solitude and farming, various loves, a life where he’s a Pulitzer winning writer, etc. He discovers Pamela, a woman who is also replaying, and she gives him something to live for from life to life, since she alone will remember him. They meet one other replayer, but he’s in a mental institution – he thinks aliens want the replayers to kill people.

Why don’t I like this book more? None of the characters have any personality. Even Jeff and Pamela – I can barely tell a difference between them and any other characters. They are vehicles for a plot that is pretty interesting, but little details of their conversations, interactions, and decisions just don’t ring true to me. They have an entire life knowing they’ll meet up in the next one, and yet 18 year old Jeff shows up at the door of 14 year old Pamela with NO IDEA what he’s going to say to her parents. Why, in all the years leading up to this, did he not think that through? Or at least on the drive over? Why didn’t he and Pamela just arrange a meeting place, and a way to signal each other that their replays had begun? It’s an obvious thing that would have avoided much of the plot.

I like the premise, and I thought the ending was pretty good. First, there’s a horrible moment when Jeff is replaying just the moments before and during his heart attack, faster and faster, and you think he’s going to be trapped in a hellish eternal dying. Then, he passes through the moment without dying, and he has a chance to live the rest of his life, this time not knowing everything that was going to happen. He revels in the uncertainty and possibility of the future.