Ouroboros
February 29th, 2008, 05:59 PM
I just got back from a short holiday at a small village near the Spanish city of La Coruna. I stayed at an old farmhouse near a little hill town, situated on the atlantic coast, with winding streets and a bizillion little bars serving the best calamari and tortillas I've ever had alongside crisp Estrella Gallicia beers by the bucketload.
Still, no short break is complete without the obligatory paperback that you dip into.
I picked up 'Replay' before I left Dublin, more or less on a whim. Ken Grimwood won a 1988 world fantasy award for it, but I only became aware of it because it has been republished as part of the Gollancz Fantasy Masterworks series. From my subsequent reading I gather this is actually quite a well-known fantasy novel on in the internet, finishing well up in the top 100 in various polls from earlier in the decade.
Replay's narrator is Jeff, who dies in his early forties from a heart-attack only to wake up in the body of his eighteen year-old self, years earlier. As the book unfolds Jeff takes advantage of his miraculous second chance, using his memories to tinker and change the path his life takes. However, when he reaches his forties again he dies once more and realises that he is caught in a pattern of 'replaying' his life over and over.
Initially 'Replay' is a meditation on the situation that Jeff finds himself in, and broader questions of how one should spend the time one is allotted in life. Initially, although traumatised by his death and resurrection, he is full of optimism and excited about the possibility of correcting the mistakes he made in his first life. Knowledge of who wins key sporting events like the World Series allow him to become independently wealthy via gambling, and the book is full of wish-fulfillment in a sense.
His 'replaying', however, is a double-edged sword. Jeff quickly realises that even though he has boundless limitations in terms of the way he can live each of his lives, he must still face death at the end of his allotted time, and when he wakes up again each time everything he has created, whether it's an international conglomerate or a new family and children, is obliterated.
Matters become more intriguing when, halfway through the book, Jeff becomes aware that there may be others living their life over and over again...
Every now and again I read a fantasy novel which genuinely trascends the genre and addresses some of the big questions that all art taps into. Jack London's 'The Star Rover', Jim Dodges' 'Stone Junction' are two examples, and now Ken Grimwood's 'Replay' is another one I'll be hanging onto to loan out to friends...
Still, no short break is complete without the obligatory paperback that you dip into.
I picked up 'Replay' before I left Dublin, more or less on a whim. Ken Grimwood won a 1988 world fantasy award for it, but I only became aware of it because it has been republished as part of the Gollancz Fantasy Masterworks series. From my subsequent reading I gather this is actually quite a well-known fantasy novel on in the internet, finishing well up in the top 100 in various polls from earlier in the decade.
Replay's narrator is Jeff, who dies in his early forties from a heart-attack only to wake up in the body of his eighteen year-old self, years earlier. As the book unfolds Jeff takes advantage of his miraculous second chance, using his memories to tinker and change the path his life takes. However, when he reaches his forties again he dies once more and realises that he is caught in a pattern of 'replaying' his life over and over.
Initially 'Replay' is a meditation on the situation that Jeff finds himself in, and broader questions of how one should spend the time one is allotted in life. Initially, although traumatised by his death and resurrection, he is full of optimism and excited about the possibility of correcting the mistakes he made in his first life. Knowledge of who wins key sporting events like the World Series allow him to become independently wealthy via gambling, and the book is full of wish-fulfillment in a sense.
His 'replaying', however, is a double-edged sword. Jeff quickly realises that even though he has boundless limitations in terms of the way he can live each of his lives, he must still face death at the end of his allotted time, and when he wakes up again each time everything he has created, whether it's an international conglomerate or a new family and children, is obliterated.
Matters become more intriguing when, halfway through the book, Jeff becomes aware that there may be others living their life over and over again...
Every now and again I read a fantasy novel which genuinely trascends the genre and addresses some of the big questions that all art taps into. Jack London's 'The Star Rover', Jim Dodges' 'Stone Junction' are two examples, and now Ken Grimwood's 'Replay' is another one I'll be hanging onto to loan out to friends...