Again and Again
Geno, an elderly man living in an assisted living facility, believes that he has lived many lives over the course of more than a thousand years. They include, charmingly, one life spent as Oscar Wilde’s cat. He tells the story of his lives to his friend Angel, who works at the facility. Geno’s stories hinge mostly on two of his lives—the ones in which he encountered his soul mate, for whom he still yearns. She is Gaya in his first life, in medieval Iberia, and she is Gladys in his current life, in modern-day California.
Geno, it becomes clear, is an unreliable narrator. The reader is left hanging, until the very end, as far as whether Geno’s lives are real or the product of a delusional mind. The pleasure of reading this book isn’t in the historical settings, which are bare at best, but rather in the twists and turns of Geno’s narrative as he discloses more and more.
Readers may find the relationship between Geno and Gaya/Gladys unconvincing, and those who are reading this primarily as historical fiction are sure to be disappointed. However, the story of Geno coming to terms with his mortality is genuinely moving, and readers of popular fiction will likely find much to enjoy here.
