Again and Again by Jonathan Evison

This book is awful. I once bought my mom a "Book of the Month" gift certificate and she didn't use it so she gave it to me. This was the only book I chose (gift certificate was for three months, I believe) and the old adage "food me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me" keeps me from trying another.

The main character in "Again and Again" is Eugene, a man who has lived many lives; he remembers his life in present day California, as a young may caught up in conquest in 700s Spain, and, in a completely unnecessary show of the author's self indulgence, as Oscar Wilde's cat. Through these thousand plus years, he's had one love and longs to find her again. This could be a sweeping, moving story of love that transcends time but it's not. "Again and Again" is filled with gratuitous flourishes in phrasing; if an undergrad wrote this Josh would tell them to use plain language and just focus on the story. Eugene proves an unreliable narrator but this serves no benefit to the plot-- more like the author wrote two different versions of the story, couldn't decide which one he liked better, so just used them both, haphazardly saying "sike!" halfway through. 

Then ending tries to be poignant but it is unearned as there are too many implausible surprises that clog up the story. It was a slog to finish this book and I won't be keeping it around.

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