Replay by Ken Grimwood
"Replay" is a novel that explores the intriguing concept of life cycles through the experiences of its main characters, Jeff Winston and Pamela Phillips, who possess the ability to relive their lives repeatedly. The narrative begins with Jeff's fatal heart attack in 1988, after which he finds himself transported back to his youth in 1963. As he navigates this familiar yet foreign setting, Jeff discovers opportunities to alter his fate, including betting on the Kentucky Derby and making significant life choices to ensure a better outcome for himself and his family.
The story delves into themes of regret, the pursuit of happiness, and the complexities of relationships, particularly through Jeff's deep connection with his daughter and his attempts to rectify past mistakes. Each iteration of his life presents new challenges, leading him to explore hedonistic pleasures, familial responsibilities, and ultimately the quest for purpose alongside Pamela, a fellow replayer. Together, they seek answers about their unusual condition while grappling with the implications of their repeated lives. The novel raises thought-provoking questions about the meaning of existence and the choices that define us across time.
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Subject Terms
Replay
First published: 1986
Type of work: Novel
Type of plot: Fantasy—alternate history
Time of work: 1963-1988
Locale: Primarily the United States and Paris, France
The Plot
The novel employs a fascinating twist. Other works have addressed the issue of what a person might do if granted one opportunity to live life over. In Replay, Jeff Winston and Pamela Phillips are replayers, people caught in a continuing cycle of life, death, and rebirth, trying to understand what has happened to them and why.
At 1:06 p.m. on October 18, 1988, Jeff Winston suffers a fatal heart attack and dies. His job as radio station manager had been full of stress, and his marriage had been full of disappointments. Jeff finds himself in his old college dorm room at Emory University with his old college roommate, Martin. Everything looks like it did in 1963, when Jeff was eighteen years old. He struggles to understand what has happened as he wanders around Atlanta.
He settles at a bar and, on an impulse, looks up the Kentucky Derby participants in a newspaper. He realizes that, if his situation is not some unimaginable hoax, Chateaugay will win the Derby in 1963. He pawns all of his possessions, makes a winning bet, and is on his way to almost unimaginable wealth. He keeps busy trying to remember all the trends of the coming years so that he can profit from them. His real happiness, however, comes from his daughter. He is enchanted with the little girl and strives to give her everything. When October 18, 1988, comes again, Jeff has a fatal heart attack and dies.
This time, he awakes in a movie theater in 1963. He decides to seek solace in the innocence of Judy, his college girlfriend. Afraid to overwhelm her with too much wealth, he avoids flashy gains. Afraid of losing another child to oblivion, he has a vasectomy and raises two adopted children. He does not intend to die again, and he spends the crucial week in the hospital, ridiculed unfairly as a hypochondriac.
Having died and returned again to 1963, he embarks angrily on a furiously hedonistic, drug-filled fling in Paris and then buries himself as a hermit in an isolated corner of Northern California. He receives a surprise, however, when he sees Starsea, a film that had not been made in any of his previous incarnations. The film leads him to Pamela, the woman with whom he will spend much of his lives to come. She, too, is a replayer, striving to make each iteration of her life count through careers as an artist, a physician, and a mother of two children.
The two join together, trying to find out what has happened to them and why they keep returning. They use one replay searching for others of their kind, with somewhat mixed results; one trying to solicit others to help them, with horrifying results; and several reacquainting themselves with the various elements of their pasts.