There are resolutions here that help redeem most of these characters, whose ugliness to each other is only leavened by the karmic twist that their author holds in store for them. It was a measure of the quality of Carey’s writing itself that I didn’t quit after that. I hate to think of myself as prudish, but this novel (termed darkly comic) had me squirming uncomfortably in several sections, from the graphic description within the first fifty pages of his wife’s adultery and its aftermath to the scene in which Harry Joy’s 17-year-old son trades his teen sister some drugs for a blowjob. At the end of Replay, you are left with a new respect for life at the end of Bliss, if you make it that far, you may see life differently, but not necessarily in affirmation. In Bliss, Harry Joy also dies at the very first page, but when he returns to life, he doesn’t dwell on his past but thinks that he has moved on to Hell and all these people posing as his family are but Actors used to torture him. My favorite novel, Ken Grimwood’s Replay, begins with the main character dying of a heart attack, then returning to life which forces him to examine what his past life had been and what he should do given this second chance.
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