Name: Replay - Das Zweite Spiel
Rating: 4.131578947368421 (57 reviews)
ISBN: 978-3453520103

Replay - Das Zweite Spiel

High Fidelity

It was 11 o’clock in the morning of Wednesday, 26th March 1986.

Jeff didn’t count their annual Florida trips to see his parents in Orlando and Linda’s family in Boca Raton; those were visits to an ever-receding past, nothing more.

Boy, girl, it didn’t matter; just a child, her child and his, who’d ask funny questions and sit too close to the TV set and show the spark of his or her own developing individuality.

We need, we need … to talk, he thought. To look each other straight in the eye and just say: It didn’t work. None of it, not the romance or the passion or the glorious plans. It all went flat, and there’s nobody to blame. That’s simply the way it happened. But of course they’d never do that. That was the main part of the failure, the fact that they seldom spoke of deeper needs, never broached the tearing sense of incompletion that stood always between them.

Ken Grimwood

Jeff Winston, forty-three, didn't know he was a replayer until he died and woke up twenty-five years younger in his college dorm room; he lived another life. And died again. And lived again and died again -- in a continuous twenty-five-year cycle -- each time starting from scratch at the age of eighteen to reclaim lost loves, remedy past mistakes, or make a fortune in the stock market. A novel of gripping adventure, romance, and fascinating speculation on the nature of time, Replay asks the question: "What if you could live your life over again?"

Replay

3.50 of 5 stars

----- 


This kind of idea about characters reliving their lives over and over has probably been done a lot, though I haven't had a chance to read one myself. But this kind of premise would absolutely become one of my most favorite interesting and fascinating premises out there, especially the particular way Ken Grimwood did his own. It was solid and decent, the flow of the story juggling between slow and fast pace, absolutely intriguing. This book would make you see your life differently from the way you normally saw it, how short it actually is. It would make you sit and wonder for a while and reflect on the choices you've made on your life until now. The regrets, the pain, the decisions, the wasted opportunities, the lost time. Everything that comprises your life. It would make you realize how this fragile thing called life has much more to offer yet it was easily taken for granted. This book is a whole lot deep than I expected and this is definitely a worth read.

KADY BURNS

I had never heard of this book until an episode of the podcast Overdue. While I am not one for fantasy, I really enjoy time travel books and movies. I really liked this book, and I am rounding up to 4 stars, but it did feel like a bit of a trudge to get through at times. There were scenes that felt like they were unnecessary and I did get confused in a few spots.

Jeremy Anderberg

Whereas Blake Crouch's Recursion gets heavy into the science of memory and even the governmental ramifications of altering memory on a mass scale, Grimwood’s novel from 1988 is almost entirely honed in on the personal level. If there’s a fixed point in time where you know you’ll die and go back 25 years to another fixed point in time, over and over again, how would you live?

In Jeff Winston’s first “replay,” he makes some big bets and seemingly risky investments and makes a lot of money. Wouldn’t we all do that? As the reader expects, that existence turns out to be pretty empty. It feels like an obvious story arc at first, but the reality of being able to make an almost unlimited amount of money would likely be all-too-tempting in the moment.

So over the course of his many other “replays,” Jeff easily makes enough to live, but then attempts to figure out what it is that makes life worth living. How can he exist in a way that doesn’t leave him feeling stagnant at the end of it all? Does it involve trying to change history? What about finding love and having a family? Maybe creative pursuits and simple living are the answer. Jeff explores all of this, while also keeping an eye out for other people experiencing the same thing.

I hadn’t heard of Replay — or Ken Grimwood — before a reader of my newsletter recommended it to me. The premise alone was enough to reserve it at the library right away, and I’m sure glad I did. It’s a fun book with relatable characters; it’ll have you thinking about what choices you’d make differently, both on a grand scale and day-to-day, if you had a few 25-year replays in your back pocket.

Replay - Das Zweite Spiel

Reviews

Highlights