The hero of Sean O'Faolain's [And Again? is] … anxious to find a social role which suits his authentic self…. Robert Younger doesn't die—or at least he reaches the age of 65 and is then invited by 'Our Celestial Divinities' to live backwards until he enters 'the womb of Time' again…. The point, O'Faolain and the Divinities insist, is to discover 'whether what you humans call Experience teaches you a damned thing'.

Given the silliness of its plot, And Again? manages to be remarkably serious and sympathetic. When O'Faolain deals with the process of 'younging' he involves himself in rather feeble absurdities, but he wisely prefers to concentrate on his hero's effort to reconstruct his past. A few clues quickly lead him to the arms of Ana ffrench—with whom he discovers he's been having an affair for 20 years—and so to the heart of the book. Its main...