When Winston discovers that there is someone else in the world who is replaying like him, he seeks her out and over time they become many-lives-long soul partners because of their shared experience.
What is revealing here is not that Winston seeks out sex in such a way, but that Grimwood makes it a point that such a lifestyle is as hollow as his first replay, where he simply accumulated a vast amount of wealth and prestige. There’s a reason for the June-December romance in our culture, where women are attracted by older men for their money–Winston, in his replays, is always able to make enough quick bets on sporting events to have a sizable bank account in his youth, which enables him to attract such women earlier in his life. Now that I’m over forty, Winston’s actions actually seem more realistic than when I read it in my twenties. It definitely was male-centric, as it is Winston who provides the internal awareness throughout the first half of the book, and in one of his many replays he goes through a very hedonistic phase.
I had loaned the book to a close female friend in recent years who had commented that it had a lot of sex in it (which somewhat turned her off, as it was a very male-centric view of sex), which I hadn’t remembered, but which I was aware of this time through.
I’ve written before about how much Replay meant to me, but I thought it would be especially interesting to re-read now in light of (a) I am now past the age of Grimwood when he wrote the book, (b) I am roughly the age of its main protagonist, Jeff Winston, and (c) I was in some small danger of dying, either through a heart attack before I ever got on the operating table or there itself.Įven though I knew the twists and turns of the plot, the narrative continued to hold me. Prior to having my recent bypass surgery, I bought a copy of my favorite book, Ken Grimwood’s Replay, to re-read.
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