You Again is an alluring mystery ... It’s also an elegant literary puzzle ... an ingenius maze ... You Again offers a sophisticated argument about the nature of time and memory ... Balancing the kinetic plot...with a realistic portrait of an ordinary marriage is no mean feat. But Immergut writes well about the kind of weary, inchoate longing that can grow to define a long-term marriage ... One of the pleasures of You Again is how capably Immergut captures her visual artist’s thought process ... Immergut, who like her heroine toiled at a soul-killing day job for many years, writes with clarity and compassion about 'ambitions that refused to be thwarted.'
... stunning ... feels eerily relevant, perfect for this time of deep uncertainty and rapidly shifting news. It is dreamlike and immersive, like falling into someone else’s alternative reality.
You Again, combining psychological suspense and fantasy, is a family-life novel, an art-world chronicle and an examination of the mutability of reality ... Ms. Immergut provides several brain-teasing surprises—and ties up her theoretical loose ends in a manner that still allows readers the space to wonder.
The events are commentated by email correspondence between neuroscience experts discussing Abigail’s case, which greatly heightens the intensity of her unraveling—it’s clear early on that Abigail’s story made history. Immergut...delivers a furious page-turner.
Although an unidentified individual’s quest to solve 'the many mysteries about Ms. Willard’s role in the deadly events of 2015' forms the book’s frame, Immergut allows the bulk of the tale to unfold via Abby’s journal. Her entries are evocatively written, keenly self-aware, and peppered with artful observations that lend the story texture, vibrancy, and depth. At once a mind-bending puzzle and a profound meditation on love, fate, ambition, and regret.
Immergut’s busy jumble of plotlines doesn’t quite cohere or resolve the nature of the sightings, and the overwrought prose doesn’t help...but there is plenty of suspense and intrigue. Still, she doesn’t stick the landing.
