Shannon
Hillsborough
A review of this — 13 weeks ago
What if you died and awoke as your younger self, all of your memories intact but your accomplishments erased? What might you do differently in the replay of your life? And what if it kept happening?
This is exactly the scenario posited in Replay, in which Jeff Winston dies of a heart attack in 1988 and reawakens as his 18-year-old self in 1963, free of his troubled marriage and his dead-end job, his life a blank slate that he can remake any way he wants. Which he does. Armed with his foreknowledge of the outcomes of major sporting events and corporate successes, Jeff has no problems quickly making a fortune. Preventing societal tragedies, such as the assassination of John F. Kennedy, proves more elusive. But most challenging of all is building meaningful relationships — with a wife or children — and then dying and starting all over again, those relationships simply negated.
The author never poses an explanation for why this is happening to Jeff. He is more interested in the choices Jeff makes in each of his lives and how those choices affect the course his life will take. Jeff’s journey ultimately leads him to a deep understanding of how isolated each of us is as we navigate through our lives, and how funadmentally important our connections with others — no matter how impermanent — become. By allowing his character to relive his life over and over, Grimwood is cycling in on the fundamental meaning of life itself. As the story progresses, Jeff’s “replays†become shorter, forcing him also to face and accept his own mortality. This unique story will fire the reader’s imagination long after the book is closed.
