Gabrielle can rewind time?but only by a few seconds. A dropped glass. A sharp word. A look that lingers too long. In the quiet folds of domestic life with her partner Jack, she edits moments like minor grammatical errors?erasing discomfort, avoiding confrontation, smoothing the rough edges of emotion. At first, it's a gift. Then, a habit. Then, something harder to define.
But time doesn't like to be rewritten.
As her rewinds multiply, so do the distortions?glitches in memory, moments repeated out of order, conversations that never happened but feel familiar. The more she tries to fix, the more undone she becomes.
In a world where time coils in on itself and the truth is never experienced the same way twice, Once, Again asks: What does it mean to live authentically when every moment can be revised? And at what cost do we preserve a version of ourselves that never really existed?
Elegiac and psychologically taut, Once, Again is a haunting speculative novel about memory, emotional erasure, and the quiet consequences of refusal. For readers of Emily St. John Mandel, Kazuo Ishiguro, and Carmen Maria Machado, this is a story of fractured time, fragile love, and the impossible ache of almost having said the right thing.
