Title: Come Again
Author: Robert Webb
Type: Fiction
Page Count/Review Word Count: 296
Rating: 3.5/5
Fun fact: When I first came across Robert Webb, I took an immediate dislike to him. I’m not sure why. It wasn’t until I got into Peep Show and That Mitchell and Webb Look that I became a proper fan of his.
I’ve read (and enjoyed) Webb’s memoir, How Not to be a Boy, but this is his first foray into fiction. Weirdly, it had quite a lot in common with The Midnight Library by Matt Haig, which I read not long beforehand.
That’s because they both take a look at how the decisions that we make influence our lives, as well as whether we might be able to change our lives for the better by doing things differently. Here, though, the focus is less on saving yourself and more on saving the person you love.
Our main character is a middle-aged woman who’s struggling to come to terms with the unexpected death of her husband, who she’d loved since they met at university. It’s a moving portrayal of grief that Webb does well, and it makes me wonder whether he’s had to deal with a grief like that himself. I hope not.
The result is a touching novel that has a little bit of everything, including a potentially huge diplomatic incident involving AI and deep fakes. Pretty topical, then.
It’s quite impressive how Webb has managed to weave some of these deeper questions and concerns together with a plot that’s a lot of fun to read. It’s hard to get the balance right between telling a decent story and asking questions of the reader, but Webb gets it just right here. It’s an impressive novel!
