I found this fair-condition softcover at a local Savers thrift shop, and nabbed it for another release copy.

I really enjoyed this book, though one could debate whether it actually is about time travel or is about memory - or, of course, both.

It begs a comparison to The Time Traveler's Wife, as both stories deal with relationship issues and, in part, with somewhat unsettling older-man-with-young-girl scenes, but the time-travel mechanics are very different; Henry only lives one life, one time-stream, but he lives it out of order, while Jeff lives the same chronological 25 years over and over. [Another time-travel novel that this one brought to mind was The Man Who Folded Himself, in which the main character could leap backwards or forwards in time at will; while the viewpoint character only had a single lifetime, he was able to learn from his parallel-universe selves, which kept spawning with every new leap he made...]

This novel opens with the line "Jeff Winston was on the phone with his wife when he died," and immediately dumps Jeff 25 years back into his own college-age self, a situation both traumatic and - once he realized what was going on - rather fascinating. And it raised major nostalgia in me, as I recalled very clear scenes from my own college days (a good deal more than 25 years ago now!). I wondered whether I'd be able to fit back into my life then - would I remember things like addresses and phone numbers, basic navigate-the-world skills in those pre-internet days? Would I remember the names of friends long out of touch? Would I be able to cut it in classes on subjects I hadn't dealt with in decades?

The book takes Jeff through several iterations of his life, a bewildering syndrome that, he muses, might be some kind of mental lapse - that is, he's imagining the whole thing in the moment of his death, or perhaps is dreaming it all - or might be some cosmic joke/lesson/punishment. The first time through he plays with his future knowledge, becoming insanely wealthy (and using surprising judgement to avoid being targeted by gangsters!), and dabbling in changing a major historical event - only to find that he couldn't make significant global changes, at least not the way he was going about it.

When the replay happens again he begins to get scared; if it's not a one-time thing, what's he supposed to do with the same 25 years to live through yet again? The choices he makes in each new iteration intrigued me, a kind of "Groundhog's Day"-loop where he can acquire and retain knowledge from each replay but where nobody else does. Until he spots clear evidence that he's not the only one...

I thoroughly enjoyed the alternate lives he chose to live, and was surprised at the changes in each iteration. I'm sure that everyone who enjoys speculative fiction (and many who don't) have wondered what they'd do if they could re-live their lives knowing what they know now, and this book touches on many of those choices, sometimes with very happy results and sometimes with disastrous ones.

I wondered how the story could possibly end, and wasn't disappointed with the way it did, though there's certainly room for many alternate resolutions - and it's left to the reader to interpret just what really is going on and why. Very entertaining story!

[There's a TV Tropes page on the novel, where I learned that the author died before writing a sequel.]

I plan to leave this book on a bench or window ledge at the Bedford Village Inn while stopping by for dinner. Hope the finder enjoys it!

[See other recent releases in NH here.]