Replay (Ken Grimwood)

I re-read this book (appropriate, no?) for my book club this year, and it holds up very well for something written in 1987. For reasons that remain entirely unexplained, after Jeff Winston dies in 1988 he wakes up in his own life, in his own body, back in 1963 and has the rest of his life to live again. But he dies again at the same minute as before, and wakes up again in 1963. It's a little like an extended Ground Hog Day; he keeps living the same times over and over. He tries different things to make his life, the lives of others, and the world better, or at least different, each time. Part of why we are reading this book now is in response to this year's award-winning The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August by Claire North, based on the same concept of people who repeat their lives again and again. There are differences in how this repeating happens between the two books, but mostly the difference is in the general atmosphere and attitude. Harry's story is about keeping your head down, not letting anything change, trying to survive and be safe in a world that keeps getting more and more dangerous. That (and the really gut-wrenching torture scenes) make it a dark and, for me, depressing story. This book, on the other hand, looks at the chance to live again as an opportunity to get it right, to make the kind of life that one can be proud of and happy in. Jeff may get it wrong sometimes, so that his own life and sometimes the world wind up worse off, but at least he is trying. There is a sense of optimism and love that is missing from Harry's story. I like this one much better.