Replay by Ken Grimwood

Congratulations, Audible. Your marketing worked. You figured out I’m hot trash for any story involving time loops, and you found a book to put in front of me for $3. Well played.

Replay by Ken Grimwood follows a man who dies of a heart attack in 1988. He was only 43 years old. Luckily for him, he wakes back up in his college dorm as an 18-year-old boy in 1963. All of his memories are intact, and he has his entire life ahead of him… again.

Sound intriguing? I thought so too. If you’d like to dive into this book spoiler-free, stop reading here. Major spoilers to come.

There’s so much to explore with this concept, from the protagonist having fun exploiting future knowledge to the philosophical implications of this endless cycle of time. Jeff Winston, our plucky time looping hero, decides to make the most of his lives by exploring an ageless, time-honored tradition espoused by philosophers throughout history: fuck bitches, get money.

Jeff quickly breaks up with his college sweetheart when she fails to understand the sexual prowess he’s gained from his past life. He then exploits every friend and family member he has to borrow money to bet on the Kentucky Derby. You know, because he happened to remember the winning horse from 25 years ago off the top of his head. As one does.

Once Jeff has secured his fortune and started his own highly successful company (creatively named Future, Inc.), he dedicates his numerous lives toward pursuing sexual pleasure. In one cycle, he tries out the Party Girl experience. When that fails to satisfy him because the party girl *checks notes* likes to party, he attempts to woo his former wife as a young woman. But alas, his would-be lover fails to succumb to his constant bragging about how rich he is. Light stalking follows.

From there, Jeff cycles through a handful of women throughout his lives. Sometimes he cheats on one love interest with another from a previous life. Most memorably, perhaps, is his decision to buy original Party Girl a plane ticket to Paris to join him in a year or so of wild sex parties. After two of his partners finish competing to see who could sleep with twenty men in the same orgy, Jeff has a moment of profound vulnerability. He opens up to one of the women and admits he knows the future.

His swinging buddies have the gall, the pluck, the sheer audacity to make fun of him for this unasked for round of sharing. So, like any rational man, Jeff angrily returns to the U.S. with Party Girl in tow. They nearly die in a plane crash on the way—after all, Jeff’s remarkable memory only extends to horse races and investment opportunities, not things that could kill him. Jeff comforts Party Girl by abandoning her on the runway after a rough crash landing. Before you judge Jeff too harshly, remember that Party Girl had this coming. She made fun of Jeff.

There is eventually a semblance of plot. Other than the awkward moments where Jeff fondly remembers destroying a bridge as a 12-year-old because his hot teacher loved her husband more than him, the time he had sex while tripping on acid and imagined he was sleeping with his daughter, and coming onto his former lover when she’s only 14 years old, the book does improve in the second half. Things get interesting when Jeff meets a woman who is also replaying her lives. The two of them contemplate the nature of the time loops, impacting the future, and finding other replayers like themselves. Oh, and they fuck. A lot.

Meeting this fellow time looper has a profound effect on Jeff. To take a direct quote from the book:

“Her wet inner flesh was like something ancient, something proto human.”

Time loops, right? So philosophical.

I often hear the advice “write what you know,” and the results are apparent in this book. Both the author and the protagonist were born in Alabama in the mid 1940s, grew up in Florida, went to Emory College, and then had a long career in radio journalism. Morbidly, they also both died from heart attacks.

If you’re like me, you’re probably wondering what people thought about Replay when it was published 30ish years ago. It managed to win the World Fantasy Award in 1988, beating out:

• Ægypt by John Crowley
• Misery by Stephen King
• On Stranger Tides by Tim Powers
• Seventh Son by Orson Scott Card
• Swan Song by Robert R. McCammon
• Weaveworld by Clive Barker

Maybe I’m just missing something, but this was one of the few books I’ve one-starred. The story concept had so much potential, but it turned out to be cringeworthy sex fantasies with a healthy does of misogyny added for flavor.

So… yeah. Well played, Audible. You got me this time.

For a book that’s everything Replay should have been (and more), I highly recommend The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August by Claire North.