You Again

Immergut (The Captives) flirts with supernatural elements in a beguiling, uneven tale of a woman’s encounter with her younger self. Abigail Willard, 46, sees herself at 22 one night on her way home from work in Brooklyn, under an awning where there used to be a nightclub . The sighting triggers a flood of memories of her 20s—young, beautiful, reckless, an aspiring artist, and just on the cusp of meeting a lover whose abandonment would set her on a new, unsatisfying path. Abigail, now an art director at a pharmaceutical company, begins lingering in Greenwich Village, where she used to live, and introducers herself to this younger version, who goes by A. Abigail tries to warn A of the heartache and turmoil to come, while her own life is collapsing. Abigail’s husband, Dennis, loses his job, and her son, Pete, falls in with an antifascist group and vandalizes a house in Brooklyn. The detective in charge of Pete’s case, meanwhile, begins flirting with Abigail, a development she hides from Dennis. As Abigail and A’s paths continue to overlap, Abigail comes closer to remembering long-buried traumatic memories of her 20s. Immergut’s busy jumble of plotlines doesn’t quite cohere or resolve the nature of the sightings, and the overwrought prose doesn’t help (“the rain taps my scalp with tiny wet fingers”), but there is plenty of suspense and intrigue. Still, she doesn’t stick the landing. (July)