Jordan Mechner’s graphic memoir is about a family repeatedly uprooted. In a formal style that resembles a palimpsest, Replay traces the ways in which Mechner’s family has left and rebuilt “home.” Ultimately, the book emphasizes how every decision we make ends up shaping the course of our lives.
The first page of Replay places the Mechner family in a dire situation. Red Nazi swastikas hang from city buildings and literally color the page. In a spread reminiscent of Miriam Katin’s brilliant graphic memoir, We Are on Our Own, everything is in black and white except for the Nazi flags, drawing our attention to their unsettling abundance. Mechner begins the memoir with this statement: “In 1938, my grandfather was desperate to get out of Austria.” The heavy clutter of the scene conveys a sense of being trapped. This feeling comes alive when Mechner’s father notices someone trapped inside one of the buildings. As we follow this first of three timelines in the memoir, we discover that Mechner’s family did escape Austria, but that Mechner’s father was waylaid in France before the family could reconnect in Cuba. France, therefore, holds significance for the Mechner family.
Whereas the first timeline follows Mechner’s father and his time uprooted in France, the other two timelines focus on Mechner himself. First, using blue illustrations, Mechner describes his time creating the successful video game Prince of Persia and his early family life. Second, shading scenes yellow, Mechner debates moving to France to create a new game. Replay demonstrates the contrast between Mechner’s father’s time in France and his own, often collapsing or layering the two periods. Just as his father had to rebuild a life in France without his immediate family, so too does Mechner face what it means to “uproot”: his marriage does not survive the move, and his children only join him after a significant amount of time.
As Mechner chronicles this uprooting, he also transcribes the memoir his grandfather wrote. In this way, the past constantly overlaps with the future. One example occurs at the very end of the memoir. After discovering some lost pages from his grandfather’s memoir, Mechner comes across the story of the pet white mouse his grandfather found upon his arrival in Cuba. Mechner’s Prince of Persia includes a small white mouse that helps the main character through the game. The image of this white mouse speaks to how small decisions and random connections determine the directions our lives will go.
At its core, Replay is about one family’s Holocaust survival, but it’s also about replanting our roots.
Dr. Megan Reynolds is the Development Manager for the National Book Foundation. Before joining the National Book Foundation, Megan Reynolds served as the Development Coordinator at Jewish Book Council. Megan holds a Ph.D. in English from the University of Oregon and BA in English with minors in Creative Writing and Spanish from Trinity University. She is originally from New Mexico and now lives in New York City.