It’s by no means a bad book. Indeed, it’s a great book that kept me riveted throughout the reading, and despite... or rather, BECAUSE of the associations I kept making as I read it, I must give this novel many more props than I might have done otherwise. The author does a great job of illuminating the main character's inner dialog and questions about his predicament. At each point in the novel, the protagonist responds to his situation sensibly and/or understandably, demonstrating smarts, will-power, perseverance, and human fallibility (his patience can and does reach a limit). I liked the plot twists and turns ... at least for the first 2/3 of the book, I really had no idea WHAT was going to happen next. I was hoping it wouldn't end the way it did, simply because that's what I was guessing might happen ... but the author did keep me guessing for the majority of it, so I am mostly satisfied. At first Jeff and Pamela like helping, but soon discover the more they help the more treacherous the world becomes. As an ex-smoker, I am also disgusted by the idea of thousands of cigarette butts littering the streets and ultimately being swept into the ocean ("Litterbugs and Butts," letter, Aug. 26). I am confused, however, about what smokers in largely pedestrian areas such as Westwood, Venice, the promenades in Santa Monica and Pasadena, and State Street in Santa Barbara are supposed to do with their smoldering butts. Sharla knows what a man wants whether he is 43 or 18, and Jeff is a mish mash of those two ages. The older Jeff is thinking I’ve never had sex with such an uninhibited woman in my entire life, and the younger Jeff is all libido. In essence, at least for a while, those two divergent people can enjoy the benefits that Sharla is so willing to provide.

After chasing money, fame, sex, drugs, family life, debauchery, political involvement, scientific enquiries, solitary meditation, stoic resignation, Jeff will hopefully end this quest with some answers. I recommend looking for them in the book. I found it very well written, with a fine balance between facts and emotions, intelligent and funny in turns, thought provoking without becoming preachy. I rally loved the book and the tension and sadness inherent in the plot. There was humour, there is challenge but over-riding it all there is a sense that we cannot remake ourselves differently to how we are, we cannot scale an impossibly high wall just by virtue of having a lot of runs at it. We are who we are and all we can do is begin to find a way to be that person more happily, more honestly, more real-ly.

Artist Edition

As the story begins, in October 1988, Jeff is dying. He wakes up in his college days, in 1963, at eighteen, and at first he can't believe it. He realizes that he knows the future, and he bets on horse races and the World Series. Jeff finds himself a millionaire, owner of a huge investment firm, but he alienates his wife from his previous life. He marries a woman he doesn't love and has a beautiful child he adores. Then, Jeff dies again. He wakes as a college student. His daughter is gone. Jeff marries his college girlfriend and settles down to a simple, quiet life, adopting two children. In October 1988, despite the best medical care, he dies again and finds himself in 1963. Replay is more about Jeff’s spiritual evolution than an action based plot, reading like a more emotionally resonant version of The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August, a book I also enjoyed but which lost me when the focus turned to Harry’s fight against an evil super-villain. Replay stays focused on the question: “How should life be lived?” But the story intensifies as options to change the course of Jeff’s life decrease, thanks to an ever contracting time loop. So: it doesn't really matter if we get several chances to get the answer right like Jeff, or one like everybody else on this planet. The novel invites us to make the best of what there is, live every moment fully ("soaring into the clear blue skies") and, whenever possible, try to leave the world a little bit better than we have found it. Another point I loved about the book and its message is that having a companion along the way is every bit as important as wisdom or fortune. In the mid-1960s, Grimwood worked in news at WLAK in Lakeland, Florida. Heading north, he returned to college, studying psychology at Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York. He also contributed short fiction to Bard's student publication, Observer in 1969, and graduated in 1970. When I try wrapping my mind around time travel and the math associated with such concepts the pressure in my head usually has me looking for a shot of high octane alcohol to keep my brain from exploding into shards of disconnected thoughts. It wouldn’t be very useful after that.

Just the week before, she'd said something similar, had said, "Do you know what we need, Jeff?" and there'd been a pause -- not infinite, not final, like this mortal pause, but a palpable interim nonetheless. He'd been sitting at the kitchen table, in what Linda liked to call the "breakfast nook," although it wasn't really a separate space at all, just a little formica table with two chairs placed awkwardly between the left side of the refrigerator and the front of the clothes drier. Linda had been chopping onions at the counter when she said it, and maybe the tears at the corner of her eyes were what had set him thinking, had lent her question more import than she'd intended.

Grimwood toys with some interesting concepts along the way, but never really gets to the “why”? Which is something I don't ordinarily complain about, I don't have to be spoon-fed everything. Here it just feels like a cheat - like going to your favorite restaurant in anticipation of a grand meal only to find that it was closed by the Board of Health. Small potatoes worry about a wonderful story! REPLAY is a heart-warming thought-provoking morality tale that will resonate with any thinking reader. Highly recommended. Each time, he tries different ways of making his life meaningful — love, sex, drugs, parenthood, selfless acts, etc. Along the way, he meets and falls for a woman having the same rebirth experience, though slightly out of sync with his. Then together they try to figure out what’s happening to them, and to navigate their growing romance that is bedeviled by tangled timelines. I wasn't first on this bandwagon; I was last. But as any true believer — or replayer — knows, there's a strange odd power in knowing you're not alone in this world. The denoument was surprisingly undramatic and unresolved but,in the context of the weirdness and unnerving experience that the two main protagonists had had and that we the readers had shared with them over countless lives, it rang true.

Redemption has to do with choices, with people choosing to change. I won't say that the hero of this book never chooses to change anything at all, but basically, he never chooses to change himself. Things happen to him. He lets them. He lives from one thing to the next. He never says, "Enough of this. I'm going to figure out why it's always me who is replaying." He never even changes his attitude toward it. It's always a torment. It's never possible for him to see it as a gift. Had he done this, the book would perhaps have lived up to the movie Groundhog Day, which despite its fluffy name, is a movie worth watching at least once a year for the rest of your life. One thing about "Replay" which is either positive or negative, depending on who you are, is that it is closely tied to American sports, popular culture, and political events from 1963 to 1988. El argumento de este libro es muy interesante y es algo que seguro que la mayoría hemos deseado o pensado alguna vez. ¿Qué cambiaríais si pudierais volver a empezar en un punto anterior de vuestra vida? Imaginaos poder volver a los 18 o a los 14 o a los 30. ¿Creéis que vuestra vida sería mejor si volvierais a empezar sabiendo lo que sabéis ahora? Those stories are basically retellings of Replay. So many of the events, solutions, even the focus on Kennedy, gambling, and building brand new careers, repeating a whole lifetime over and over, learning and attempting bold crazy schemes, are the same. Pues esto es lo que le ocurre a nuestro protagonista Jeff , tras ser consciente de que le está dando un ataque al corazón en 1988 a los 43 años se despierta en 1963 con 18 años de nuevo, en su habitación de la residencia universitaria. Haceos una idea el desconcierto, todo exactamente igual que lo que ya vivió excepto él, que tiene los recuerdos que tenía al morir.Grimwood was a journalist (he died in 2003 … at least in THIS timeline) and it shows, both in the great command of history and world events (the protagonist, also in the media, uses this to his full advantage), and in the stiff, matter-of-fact writing style. That utilitarian technique can sometimes be used to great effect, but not in this book, at least not for me. I was never inspired by the prose, never really cared what happened to the main characters because I didn’t get to know them except in the broadest of strokes. Other than the first cycle, when Jeff is confused and stumbling through this new reality and trying to act normal around his co-ed girlfriend, the rest of book felt like a journalist reporting dispassionately on mysterious events. The story was like a stone skipping over the surface of a deep, swirling mystery, and I wanted it to dip below the surface. This book certainly had me thinking about what I would do if I had a chance to relive the last twenty-five years. At first there is a sense of excitement about being twenty-two again, looking like a Greek God again, but as I gave it more thought I realized that overall I’m very happy with my life. I’m not sure I’d trust fate enough to follow a different course. There are minor things I would fix, maybe look a little smarter by not saying the wrong thing this time around. I’d skirt around those points of stupidity that I use to bludgeon myself with when I’m feeling blue. I would bet enough on sporting events to become comfortable, but not enough to become obscenely wealthy. (How much money does anyone really need?) I would enjoy being young because only someone in their forties or older can truly enjoy all those wonderful fledgling benefits properly. Nos van presentando las distintas vidas (replays) que le van sucediendo a nuestro protagonista, hasta que conoce a otra persona que le está sucediendo lo mismo y se van conociendo hasta enamorarse. Vemos las distintas vidas de ambos, las opciones que van eligiendo cada uno de ellos. Pero se van dando cuenta que cuando empiezan de nuevo no empiezan en el mismo punto exacto sino que hay un desfase de tiempo que se va acrecentando.

First published in 1986, seven years before the release of the film Groundhog Day, Ken Grimwood’s novel was a precursor to countless “time loop” stories that would follow. Por otra parte, no se si es mi edición o es que está escrito así pero de repente había saltos de escenario o de tiempo en la misma página sin venir a cuento y sin previo aviso (ni siquiera un interlineado especial), lo que me desconcertaba a lo largo de la lectura y me hacía releer el párrafo anterior para ver si es que estaba en modo empanadilla leyendo. Another novel that explores the same theme of someone reliving their life again and again upon death is The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August by British author Catherine Webb. In the subsequent epilogue, a Norwegian man finds himself waking up in a youthful body in 1988, twenty-nine years before his apparent death in 2017. He marvels at the possibilities that await him at retaining the memories of his life and world and national events for the next quarter century. It becomes apparent to the reader that the replay phenomenon is not limited to the three individuals experiencing it in the novel, nor is it limited to the 1963-1988 timeframe. Our dilemma, extraordinary though it is, is essentially no different than that faced by everyone who's ever walked this earth: We're here and we don't know why.This is pretty much the textbook example of male gaze. It's painful to listen to this for hours on end. Now I know what's like for women to watch or read most movies or books. So, yeah. Thanks, Replay, for helping me to build empathy with how women feel in our society by being so terribly creepy? I think? Jeff remembers that the Kennedy Assassination is coming up and feels he needs to do something about it. He engineers a situation that has Lee Harvey Oswald arrested. I can only imagine the discombobulated state of anyone waking up 25 years in the past. If this phenomenon happened to me today I would be waking up in 1989 Que harías si pudieras vivir tu vida pero recordando todo lo de la anterior? ¿y si volverias a repertirlo? And this time, he's no dummy. He doesn't marry the wife he knows he'd one day divorce. He bets on the '69 Mets and makes a ton of cash. He's rich, rich, rich. And then he turns 43 and drops dead — again.