Again and Again by Jonathan Evison book review -

You should know the name Jonathan Evison because he’s the author of several exuberant, thoroughly charming novels, including “West of Here” and “The Revised Fundamentals of Caregiving.” But unfortunately you’re more likely to have heard of him because he’s one of the writers most frequently condemned by book-banning tyrants gnawing through our public schools and libraries.

Evison’s “Lawn Boy” was widely praised when it appeared in 2018. Writing in The Washington Post, Carol Memmott called it “an effervescent novel of hope that can enlighten everyone.” Library Journal recommended it as “an effective coming-of-age novel.” And the American Library Association named “Lawn Boy” one of the year’s 10 adult books that have “special appeal to young adults.”

Nonetheless, offended by the novel’s frank language, protesters soon began collecting dry sticks. They claimed that “Lawn Boy” was pornographic and depicted pedophilia. In 2021, the ALA Office for Intellectual Freedom announced that “Lawn Boy” was the second-most challenged book in America, and Evison revealed that he’d been receiving death threats.

Considering what an ordeal Evison has endured, I was looking forward to reviewing his new novel, “Again and Again.” I hoped that another successful book might provide some welcome distraction from the snarling of censorious prigs.

I have good news and bad news: No one will feel particularly excited to ban “Again and Again.” But, alas, no one will feel particularly excited to read it either. Despite the promise of its premise, the high-concept plot of “Again and Again” never manages to rise above its lax execution and clashing intentions.

The story opens with an old man named Eugene telling us about his lonely existence as a resident in the Desert Green elder-care facility. His beloved wife, Gladys, passed away a few years ago, and now he has nothing left. “If eleven centuries have taught me anything,” he says, “it’s how to travel light.”

That’s not your standard shuffleboard psych-out. Eugene insists that he was first born in 10th-century Spain and has since been reincarnated many times, too many times. “I’m ready to die,” he says. But a new housekeeper named Angel — symbol alert! — keeps interrupting Eugene’s pity party. Desperate for connection, despite his irritable exterior, Eugene eventually opens up and begins regaling Angel with memories of his remarkable lives. Once reticent, he’s suddenly Scheherazade, trying to keep himself alive with one cliffhanger after another.

That’s a promising start. Evison has a big heart for sad-sack characters, and his former experience as a personal-care attendant informs his writing about the special relationships that can develop with people whom society has written off. But moving erratically between several different times and settings puts enormous pressure on the quality of these various tales. It’s true that Angel seems captivated, but his alternative is scrubbing toilets or sweeping up toenail clippings; we readers need Eugene’s stories to be considerably more engaging.

For instance, a millennium ago in “Seville, or Ishbiliyah as it was then known, during the golden age of Abd al-Rahman III in al-Andalus,” young Eugene is a poor orphan prowling the streets looking for easy targets. One day at the market, he steals a purse from a powerful Moor and runs as fast as he can. Seeing he’s about to be apprehended, a beautiful woman named Gaya hides him. When they’re both captured, they fall in love and scheme to escape while serving the rebellion against the Moors.

Unfortunately, this story is not told with either the specificity of lived experience or the intensity of great melodrama.

That problem feels even more acute when Eugene describes his life as Whiskers, Oscar Wilde’s cat. There’s only one reason anyone should bother listening to Oscar Wilde’s cat, and that’s to hear witty and scandalous comments by Oscar Wilde. But like an actual cat, Whiskers doesn’t pay attention to anyone but himself, and so we’re left with only a few hairballs about the great playwright.

Other stories — involving Lewis and Clark and World War II — rotate through Eugene’s repertoire with even less import. And then, after suffering through all this, we begin to suspect that we’re not really in the presence of a 1,100-year-old man after all. Eugene is simply chronically lying, a habit he picked up to compensate for a cruel childhood and an exceptionally lonely life. The only thing being reincarnated in the Desert Green elder-care facility is the Jell-O.

A stronger editorial hand might have saved “Again and Again” by cutting away the tall tales with their stale aura of fantasy and allowing a fuller exploration of the traumas that produced this gruff but creative man. Eugene’s actual past and his friendships with members of the staff are rich subjects.

But even then, the whole story would need to be given a full-body sponge bath to wash away the sweat of sentimentality. As written here, the old man’s insistence that he first fell in love with one of the women at the nursing home back in 10th-century Spain vibrates between corny and creepy. And Eugene’s affection for Angel finally reaches a saccharine crescendo that reads like a bake-off between Mitch Albom and Nicholas Sparks.

“I only hope,” Eugene says, “that I am not born again.”

I don’t think you have anything to worry about, Eugene.

Ron Charles reviews books and writes the Book Club newsletter for The Washington Post.

Again and Again

By Jonathan Evison

Dutton. 318 pp. $28

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