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Jeff Winston is a 43 years old radio journalist, trapped in a tedious job and a dysfunctional marriage, when he gets the chance of a lifetime: when he's having a heart attack, instead of dying he wakes up 25 years earlier, in 1963, with all his memories intact. I don't think there's any person on this planet who, approaching the 50 years milestone, has not fantasized about starting over with the wisdom that only age and experience can grant, and enjoy all the perks a young body and financial foresight can grant.

The time-loop story has been done before - my first one was The Tunnel Under the World by Poul Anderson, followed by movies like Peggy Sue Got Married and Groundhog Day . The merit of Ken Grimwood is to take this premise and explore it in all it's implications and variations, well beyond the immediate self gratification most of us think at first (like betting on the winning horse in a major race or going out with the hot babe from your chemistry class). The fact hat he chooses a 25 five year interval for the loop instead of 24 hours, helps him develop his characters better and provides a more adequate canvas to explore consequences. He turns the idea of reliving one's life into the chance for introspection and for searching an answer to the grandest existentialist questions: Why are we here? Why struggle if it all ends in death and loss? Frank Capra declared in one of his classic movies : You can't take it with you! and Jeff will realize this axiom in painful detail once his initial quest for fortune and easy living comes to an abrupt end in his first replay, when he once again he is 43 years old and has a heart attack.

I don't really care about genre categories and whether Replay should be considered science fiction or fantasy or mainstream (speculative fiction seems the best bet) . The author deliberately avoids any attempt at a scientific explanation for the ordeal/blessing Jeff is subjected to, because the point of the novel is self discovery and the Meaning of Life. Jeff exclaims at one point:

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.

The key to the novel is to be found in the quote Grimwood atributes to Plato (and Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ to Socrates) :

'The unexamined life is not worth living'

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.

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.

Grimwood selected another quote as an aswer to the "questioned life" , one that I can use without being afraid of spoilers. This one is from William Blake, and will be added to my favorite quotations here on Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ:

'To see a world in a Grain of Sand,
and a Heaven in a Wild flower'
'Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand,
and Eternity in an hour'

My final recommendation is for a companion book to Replay . By pure coincidence, I started another novel in parallel to this one : Dancing With Eternity by John Patrick Lowrie. If Ken Grimwood looks backward and inward in the search for existential answers, Lowrie uses the same replay concept (named reboot in his space opera) of receiving another chance at life in a rejuvenated body with memories intact, to look forward thousands of years into the future and explore the effect of quasi-immortality on human psychological and social development.