Again Again

Adelaide is talky and sparkly on the outside, but floundering on the inside. She's just finished her junior year at Alabaster Prep (see also: The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau Banks), and her boyfriend of seven months has just dumped her. She has make-up work to do over the summer, because of double distractions during the school year: her relationship with "Mikey Double L" and the ongoing worry over her younger-by-two-years brother Toby, a recovering opiod addict. Toby and their mother, Rebecca, are in Baltimore, while Adelaide is with her father, Levi, at Alabaster, where he teaches. Now that Mikey Double L won't be around this summer, what will Adelaide do with herself?

In Again, Again, Lockhart employs a storytelling show more technique similar to Kate Atkinson's Life After Life and A God in Ruins, playing with the nature of fiction. The main narrative is occasionally interrupted with short passages of text in a different font, different versions of scenes. (Not sure how this works in the audio version.) Are these possibilities from a parallel universe? Adelaide's imaginings or rehearsals or wishes? Ultimately, the fourth and final section is in a third font - presumably the "real" story of Adelaide's summer, her loves, her relationships with her family, her schoolwork, and herself.

Quotes

She had ruined everything with
her unsavory, unwanted
sadness, sadness that made her
unlovable and burdensome, sadness that was
maybe anger in disguise,
maybe anger, leaking out of her... (52)

...but [her] resolve never lasted more than a single morning. The magnetic pull of her interior life was too strong. (199)

"She almost changed how I feel about the thing that I made, and that just feels wrong, do you know? Shouldn't I decide how I feel about the thing I made?" (Adelaide to Toby, 222) show less

This book dishes up high school romance with a dash of a whimsy and a bittersweet sense that nothing is permanent. After her brother's drug addiction splits apart her family, Adelaide loses herself in a whirlwind romance with Mikey Double L, who dumps her right before the summer of their senior year. Adelaide is shattered.

Adelaide's spending the summer working as a dog walker for teachers at her private school, trying to get her grades up after a semester where she didn't have the emotional energy to even try and struggling to both feel lovable and to learn to love. But then she meets Jack at the dog park, and begins to think he might be everything she's looking for.

This book pulls the reader into multiple universes, where each small show more choice Adelaide makes leads to a very different outcome. The style is lyrical and lilting with the prose sometimes lapsing into verse, mostly when Adelaide is having an emotional breakthrough. You'll find yourself glued to the page as choices lead Adelaide to fall in love in different ways with different people. Maybe Adelaide will find love in an alternate universe or maybe she'll find it in this one.

The dogs that Adelaide walks are characters in this book, and they are perfectly delightful. They have adorable names - how can you not love dogs named B-Cake, Rabbit, the Great God Pan, Voldemort and Ellabella? Each one has their own great personality, and we even get to peek into their thoughts from time to time. They added an extra layer of playfulness that I loved.

Adelaide's a character you can root for again and again, and I loved how we got different glimpses of the supporting characters' personalities in each universe. In the end, this is a story of how, when we open ourselves up to love, we also open ourselves up to pain, and we may not know what our perfect happy ending will look like until it happens.

Trigger warning: addiction

Thank you to the publisher for the complimentary copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. show less

I think Adelaide is the kind of person who replays or fantasizes relationship scenarios in her mind and considers the outcomes, whether ideal or painful. Was it real love with Mikey Double L? Is it real love with Jack now? Can she still trust and love her brother Toby, an addict? The narrative structure is not as confusing to understand as one might think once you realize what she's doing. Adelaide is angsty and introspective but sensibly realistic at the core.

It's the summer after Adelaide's junior year, and she's floundering. On academic probation, recently dumped by her boyfriend, worried constantly about her brother, a recovering addict. In this inventively-written narrative, Adelaide falls in and out of love in a series of multiple possibilities (multiple universes?) as the people she meets weave in and out of each other's stories.

I enjoyed this book more than Genuine Fraud but not quite as much as The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks -- about on par with We Were Liars. I'd recommend it to you if you liked any of those books, or if you find the concept intriguing.

Good premise. Adelaide's boyfriend just broke up with her. Her brother is in drug related rehab. She's on academic probation. The summer is here and she has a job walking dogs. She must finish her stage design project.

But she meets Jack and it's love at first sight. Or is it? She plays alternatives in her head. But then back to reality.

I like the way lockhart including these alternate realities but didn't care much for the subject. It was an OK book.

Once you get used to the alternate realities of the text, this book is quite charming and I found the ending/s very satisfying. Adelaide is living on a university campus with her father over the summer break. She walks dogs for some of the lecturers who have gone away on holidays. She and her father are separated from her mother and brother Toby because he is a recovering drug addict even though he is only 16. These are the facts that exist in nearly all the realities that Lockhart writes for Adelaide. In some, she meets a boy walking the dogs in the park and starts a relationship (?) with him even though she has just broken up with her boyfriend. In others she doesn't or she starts a relationship with someone else. But at the core of show more it all is Adelaide's fractured relationship with her younger brother and the hurt and anger she carries inside. She treasures the moments before his addiction and now feels she cannot trust him because he has relapsed once. She is also a little ashamed because she neglects to mention his addiction to her boyfriend ( only that he is "ill"). The use of different fonts to distinguish the differing realities is very good and makes it easy to follow where you are in Adelaide's story. One for those who liked The Pause by John Larkin and the Sliding Doors movie. show less

Got 230 pages in and if I continue I know I’m gonna end up rating it like 2 stars.

I’m just so confused and based on what I see flipping ahead I really don’t think finishing it is gonna make me any less confused.

Also a lot of things are really annoying me. I started out like the MC but about half way through I started not liking her that much.

There are probably only about 2 things I actually really like which is some interesting discussions that happen that really make me think about certain things and the relationship with the brother. I really like the brother. Despite like these things I have no motivation to finish this when I could be reading something I’ll enjoy more. I definitely understand how other people could like show more this though :) just not for me I think. show less