Following a mysterious accident, Jason travels back in time twelve months and is overjoyed to discover his brother Archie, who died in a fire, alive again. Jason sets about changing the course of history to prevent his brother’s death. In the process, he gains a deeper understanding of the people around him – his best friend Leo, his sister Grace, his girlfriend Zara, and Archie himself – which in turn reveals clues about what really happened on the night of the fire. Yet fate seems to be one step ahead, and the original timeline keeps reasserting itself. Can Jason discover the truth in time to save his brother? The Year I Lived Twice is a time-loop novel about bereavement, fraternal love, romance and second chances.
Following a mysterious accident, Jason travels back in time twelve months and is overjoyed to discover his brother Archie, who died in a fire, alive again. Jason sets about changing the course of history to prevent his brother’s death. In the process, he gains a deeper understanding of the people around him – his best friend Leo, his sister Grace, his girlfriend Zara, and Archie himself – which in turn reveals clues about what really happened on the night of the fire. Yet fate seems to be one step ahead, and the original timeline keeps reasserting itself. Can Jason discover the truth in time to save his brother? The Year I Lived Twice is a time-loop novel about bereavement, fraternal love, romance and second chances.
Saturday 15 December 1984
It’s been seven weeks and five days since the death of my little brother Archie. I keep picturing him stuck inside that burning shed: the smoke as thick as cream, the scorching heat searing his lungs, the stinging eyes, the inability to get air. I imagine it feels like drowning in hot wool. The shed was the one on Plot 9, Halsted Field Allotment. It belonged to Leo, who also died in the blaze. I don’t know what I feel about that. Leo was my best and oldest friend. On the other hand, I strongly suspect he started the fire.
Now it's mid-December, and I'm seated cross-legged on the carpet in front of a bare Christmas tree. Dad and I just lugged it here from the shop in the high street. The tree is so big, it fills the corner of the room like a dark green mountain, but I barely notice it because all I can see right now is smoke and flames. I’m not sure what the trigger was this time. The sight of a smoky grey cat? The smell of roasting chestnuts? It may have been the burn of the bark on my palm as I helped Dad push the tree’s stump into the metal stand.
I squeeze my eyes shut until they hurt, then open them and stare hard at the tree. I study its furry pinnacle and shaggy green flanks. I study it all the way down to the litter of needles on the blue carpet. I try counting the needles, but still those flames are there, licking at my brother’s skin. They must have hurt like nothing I can imagine.
Dad has gone up to the attic to fetch the decorations. My sister Grace, lanky and awkward, is sprawled like a dropped doll on the armchair. “I don't know why we even bought a tree,” she says. There's a moodiness in the angles of her face that I think are becoming permanent. She has Mum's long limbs, Dad's round grey eyes and thin lips. She's seventeen, but looks older. We all do.
“I think we should try and make things as normal as possible,” says Mum, who's sitting on the sofa with her hands tucked between her knees and insomnia bruises under her eyes. Her hair is somehow the same rich brown as always, but everything else about her is colourless and flaccid. Slowly, as if performing a strenuous exercise, she gets up and stoops to retrieve a card that's fallen from the mantelpiece.
Dad comes in, his big shoulders bowed under the weight of the box of decorations. His arrival prompts an attack of déjà vu. I’ve been getting them a lot since Archie’s death – the feeling that all this has happened before. It’s probably a grief thing. I want to reach out and grab this false memory, yank it into the light so I can see what it means, but it disappears before I can grasp it, like smoke through my fingers.
I didn't notice Dad’s wrinkles before, but now I see them as clearly as motorway lines on a map. His hair, what's left of it, is turning a festive silver. His mood, though, is grim. I don't think he's going to be putting on his Christmas Crooners tape. “We should just do this,” he says, and by do he means get through. None of us want Christmas this year.
But something happens when he tears open the lid and we see the familiar dusty, shiny ornaments, the coiled metallic fur of silver, red and gold. Grace reaches down and grabs a fistful of tinsel. Mum takes out the fake holly. I pick up a sparkling plastic snowflake, icy cold from its storage in the attic, and try hanging it on the tree. I attach another one – a pale gold bauble. Soon I'm absorbed in the task of pushing little loops of metal onto thin, bristly branches. I work slowly, taking lots of care. I almost don't hang Santa in his Speedboat, because that was Archie's favourite. But then I do. I want it to be exactly like last year and every year before that.
Grace is wild and slapdash, taping and draping with abandon. An asymmetric loop of tinsel, two red baubles hanging next to each other – such crimes never seem to bother her. She snaps at me for going too slow. I inform her she's going too fast. Dad grizzles and growls over the knots in the string of lights. But mostly our irritation is performance, just the Harris family trying to make this horrid time more normal.
I fetch a stepladder from the laundry room to reach the upper branches, and help Dad wind the lights around the tree. By the time we switch them on, it's getting dark outside. Everything that can glitter or gleam does so and it’s charming, and we almost forget that underneath it's the same sad, empty room. Mum wants to light a fire. I ask her not to, so she lights candles instead. Dad puts on his cassette and Frank Sinatra sings Santa Claus is Coming to Town. We drink tea and eat mince pies. Dad pours himself a whisky. One of Grace's gold-foil decorations falls off the wall. Beneath our laughter, I can hear Archie choking for breath.
*
“Oh, here’s something we’ve forgotten,” says Mum, handing me the shiny red tree-topper. “Jason, you should put this on top of the tree. It's tradition.”
“Only since last year,” says Grace. “It was always Dad before that.”
“Jason's taller than me now,” says Dad. “The tradition says the tallest in the family must place the thingy on top of the tree.”
“It's called a finial,” says Mum.
“So it'll always be Jason then,” says Grace with a scowl.
“Yes. Unless one of you produces a son who's taller than Jason,” says Dad.
“Or a daughter,” says Mum.
“Or a daughter,” agrees Dad.
I'm standing there clutching the tree-topper, about to mount the stepladder, when I notice something peculiar: everything about this moment is the same as last year. The decorations on the tree are identical – I've managed to hang them in exactly the same way. Mum is standing by the mantelpiece, as she was then, and Dad is seated in the same armchair, same whisky glass nestled in his palm, looking proud and relieved to have passed on this duty to his eldest. Grace is standing to my left, same as last year, rocking on her heels, knotted up with too much energy or resentment or both. All that's missing is Archie. He's the empty space in the middle of the room, unbalancing the scene, unbalancing all of us with his absence.
I was seventeen last Christmas, just a month and a half older than Grace is now. I hadn't met Zara yet – the thrill of her sudden arrival was still in my future, as was her equally swift departure. But Zara feels like such a small thing now, like a ladybird that settled on my hand just before the hurricane. Leo was still with us, still my best friend. I don't know what I'm supposed to feel about him now. I miss him every day, and I'm sorry for his mum, but overall I think it's probably better that he died in the fire.
I hesitate at the foot of the ladder, still waiting for someone to mention the other thing that happened last year when I placed the topper on the tree. I'm surprised and also relieved that everyone’s forgotten. But then Grace's cheek twitches – a mean, sharp little twitch of recollection. “Hey, do you remember when Jason fell off the ladder?”
Mum doesn't know whether to laugh or shudder at the memory and does both. “Oh that's right,” she says. “You'll be more careful this time, won't you darling?”
Grace laughs. “He fainted. You fainted, didn't you Jay?”
“Only for a second.”
“And when you woke up, Archie said...” She stops, and her face buckles. At least three separate twitches start up in her cheeks.
Dad finishes the quote. “He said, ‘It's a Christmas miracle. Jason's come back to life.’”
Dad stares into his drink, barely a flicker of a smile. Mum wipes her eyes. “Put the finial on the tree, darling, and when you do, w-we'll all think about our little …” In a strangled sob, she finishes, “… our little angel.”
I start to climb the ladder, taking each step slowly. I don't know why I fainted last time. Maybe I was dehydrated. Maybe the room was too warm. I remember the fire was burning in the grate. Is it possible to hate an element? I'm conscious of everyone watching me. I'm picking up anxiety from Mum, pride from Dad, and Grace is just hoping I'll fall again. Mostly I'm aware of the absent boy watching me from the middle of the room.
My love for Grace is all mixed up and complicated by other stuff. We're too close in age, too far apart in temperament. But with Archie it was like pure unfiltered sunlight. I'm probably getting soppy. I have to watch that. He wasn't perfect – could be a spoiled brat like any youngest sibling – but ah God, I miss him so much.
I reach the fourth step, one below the top, and the room starts to sway, just as it did last year. The baubles swim like phosphorescent fish in a dark green ocean. I blink hard, not quite believing this is happening again, and my vision steadies. I mount the top step, bringing me close to the fuzzy green vertical branch at the summit. It's blurry, but I can see it and only need reach out and pop the topper in place. I clutch the ladder tight with my left hand and stretch out my right, thinking all the while about Archie, as Mum asked us to. Not Archie in the fire, but Archie in the park, playing three-and-in with me, Leo and Grace on a Sunday morning, letting him score just to see him do his ridiculous Marco Tardelli goal celebration.
As I place the topper, the ladder starts to wobble beneath me. I hold on very tight, but I can't make it stable. It's not only the ladder, the floor beneath it is moving. The world has become fluid. Above me, the ceiling is warping, the curtains undulating in blue velvet waves. The branches of the tree are bristling like the spines of a sea urchin. Even the ladder has turned soft. My feet are falling through the melting steps and I’m toppling backwards. Time slows. It feels like an age before I land with a soft whump on the floor.
When I open my eyes, I see my family gathered about, gazing down at me. Everything is as it was, sort of, but the room is warmer, the colours deeper and more real, as if coming not from the surface but from the heart of each object. The faces of my family are glowing in the light from the fire – the one I told Mum not to light. Grace is giggling, Mum and Dad appear mildly concerned. And Archie – my heart jolts to see him there – is looking startled and excited. He claps his hands and shouts, “It's a Christmas miracle. Jason's come back to life. Again!”
The Year I Lived Twice
In this early 80's throwback, Jason, an otherwise typical teenage boy who is reeling from the recent loss of his little brother Archie, is unexpectedly sent back in time to re-live the last 12 months before he died. Jason spends the year doing everything he can to change his little brother's fate, and learns more than he bargained for along the way. But is it enough to save Archie?
This would be a good read for those who love the premise of things like Groundhog Day, the Butterfly Effect, or any other tale depicting a race against time. Overall, Alex Woolf presents a very well put-together story that turns from an interesting examination of the human psyche into a thrilling whodunnit.
I personally had a little trouble believing the protagonist was a 15-year-old boy, and at times his inner monologue felt more like that of a middle aged university professor. But you do probably become a more deeply introspective person when you're unexpectedly hurled into a time loop, so I'll let that one slide. There are also two vaguely sexual remarks Jason makes about his sister Grace that I found slightly disturbing and not at all in line with his character.
Notwithstanding, the characters in this book are incredibly lifelike and I especially enjoyed the portrayal of Grace and Archie, Jason's siblings. The effort Jason puts into connecting with them in his repeated timeline is incredibly heartwarming and probably my favourite thing about the book.
Philosophy buffs will likely enjoy this as a deep exploration into the application of determinism vs. free will in modern day life; that is, do we really have free will, or will our fates play out no matter what we do? As much as I loved the way such theories are explored through Jason's extensive conversations with another character, Millie, I did feel that some of the dialogue (and other small talk throughout the book) wasn't entirely relevant to the story's progression and could've been cut out.
This book stirred a mixture of deep thought and emotion in me and I would recommend it for anyone who enjoys stories that make them reflect on their own lives (but not too much)! Also, I won't spoil it for you, but make sure you hang on tight for some delightfully unforeseen twists and turns!
Despite my nitpicking, definitely worth the read.