Friday, August 13, 2021

Replay by Ken Grimwood

 

(hb; 1986)

From the inside flap

“We have all fantasies about it. Especially men like Jeff Winston. At 43, he’s trapped in a tepid marriage and a dead-end job. Until he has a sudden, fatal heart attack and awakens in his eighteen-year-old body in 1963.

“Staring at a Playboy centerfold on his college dorm room wall, Jeff Winston realizes that his memories of the next 25 years are intact. He knows the future of stocks like IBM and Xerox. He knows who will win the Kentucky Derby. He is going to replay his life─living once again through the assassinations of the 1960s, Vietnam, Watergate, the Reagan revolution.

“The odds against the Dodgers winning the 1963 World Series in four straight games are astronomical. But Jeff makes a bet and with the money that brings him, he builds a multibillion-dollar fortune, becomes one of the most powerful men in the world.

“And again. . .

“Until he turns 43 and dies again. When he awakens in 1963, he can make other choices. . . from uninhibited hedonism to a search for understanding. Or perhaps love─with a woman who, like Jeff, is a replayer. How many more times must they lose each other and all they hold dear? And why have they been chosen to replay their lives?”

 

Review

Replay is a mainstream, well-paced and character-centric science fiction/reliving-your-life novel, solid in its descriptions and story-freshening elements to keep it entertaining and interesting. Good read, this, worth checking out.

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