Literature / Repeat

Repeat is a 2015 science fiction novel by Neal Pollack.

Brad Cohen is not having a good time of things: a struggling writer with a family to provide for and a history of missed opportunities, he's just had his latest project turned down, the crappy TV show he was writing for is being cancelled, and he finds himself celebrating on the night before his fortieth birthday with a night-out that he knows he can't afford. Convinced he's a total failure, he suffers a breakdown that his wife Juliet - a self-described witch - attempts to remedy by providing him with a potion that will supposedly make him feel better. Brad drinks it right before bedtime...

...and promptly wakes up in the womb, in 1970, right back at the start of his life.

Now, Brad has a chance to relive his life the way he could have, this time knowing what opportunities to pursue and how to make the most of this second chance. Using his foreknowledge to invest in successful corporations and presidential candidates, he becomes rich, famous, and successful... but alas, he never manages to find Juliet again, so it all rings hollow in the end. Worse still, on his fortieth birthday, he finds himself falling asleep...

...and waking up in the womb all over again.

What follows is a journey across numerous iterations of history as Brad struggles to find a way to escape the endless cycle of rebirths and find a life that he can be satisfied with.

Repeat provides examples of:

• Anti-Hero: Brad Cohen is a classic version; he's burned-out, he's missed a boatload of opportunities, he's consumed with self-pity, he ends up making himself look absolutely pathetic, and he's not even all that morally upstanding. Even once he starts reinventing himself in the time loops, he's not exactly a nice guy, even opting not to bother with stopping the 9/11 attacks when the opportunity arises, believing that there's a limit to how effectively he can use his foreknowledge without making himself look insane.
• Back to the Womb: The action of the story kicks off with Brad waking up in his mother's womb and eventually being born again; in every life that follows, he vanishes out of existence on the night before his fortieth birthday and wake up in the womb, ready to start the "Groundhog Day" Loop all over again.
• Born-Again Immortality: Brad essentially "dies" on his fortieth birthday on every iteration of his life and is reborn as a fetus. For good measure, it's implied that the cycle he leaves behind continues on without him, indicating that he might literally cease to exist there.
• Brainy Baby: Brad retains his adult intelligence and memories despite restarting his life as an infant; though this results in an incredible amount of embarrassment once he has to start dealing with things like breastfeeding and his bowels, it gives him a headstart over literally every other child on the planet once his body matures enough for him to speak.
• Caught with Your Pants Down: A natural feature of Brad's teenage years on the first repeat, this inevitably results in him accidentally getting caught by his father while jacking off. Mutual embarrassment ensues.
• Creator Cameo: Late in the books, Brad's increasingly bewildered antics result in him becoming the subject of an article in the Chicago Reader - written by Neal Pollack, who narrates this section of the book.
• Deathless and Debauched: Getting bored after two or three cycles, Brad uses his knowledge of the future to fund a lifestyle of mindless hedonism: in the resulting FBI investigation, he admits to having been "fucking about three women and about one man a week for the last twenty years," with ridiculous quantities of drugs thrown in for good measure. He even brags of doing things like having liquid psilocybin injected into his penis or jamming tennis balls into his anus while masturbating into a handful of cocaine.
• Earn Your Happy Ending: After living a long succession of increasingly miserable lives, Brad figures out that he can only escape the cycle by finding a life he can be satisfied with; so, on his next iteration, he decides to live his personal history exactly as he did originally without trying to change anything, eventually meeting his future wife, getting married, starting the same family he had in his first life, and winding up back in the same faltering job he had at the start of the story - and he finally wakes up on the morning after his fortieth birthday. Then, just as it looks as if the story's going to end on a slightly bittersweet note, Brad is called to a meeting with his agent, who reveals that his project has gotten a second chance and the animated show he was writing for has been renewed, allowing him some much-needed cash and another shot at original success. Plus, thanks to the infinite loop, Brad has a ton of inspiration...
• Executive Excess: Justified; in one of his later lives, Brad becomes a high-flying stockbroker... and an inordinate part of his career seems focused on increasingly ruinous acts of hedonism rather than actually doing any work. However, Brad has the advantage of having knowledge of the future stock market, essentially allowing him to succeed with little effort - to the point that the FBI investigate him for possible financial crimes.
• Heroic BSoD:
  • The time-travel is prompted by a major breakdown on Brad's part following a very bad day, leaving him sobbing in despair.
  • After numerous repetitions of the cycle, Brad is left so miserable by his inability to stay in one lifetime or find his wife that he spends one lifetime emotionally crushed and seemingly homeless, too depressed to use his latest life to do anything.
• "Groundhog Day" Loop: The crux of the novel, with Brad living the first forty years of his life then waking up in the womb to do it all over again; appropriately enough, it's also the crux of the TV idea he tries to get greenlit, and one of the less-polite Hollywood suits directly compares to Groundhog Day.
• Groundhog Peggy Sue: Brad quickly realizes that the loop is doomed to continue indefinitely, and is reduced to doing just about anything in the dim hope of breaking the cycle, without much success. The ultimate twist is that the way he breaks the loop is not about changing history, but about learning to accept his life as it is: by finally abandoning his efforts to alter his personal timeline and simply going through life exactly as he did the first time, he breaks the cycle.
• Hookers and Blow: In one of his later lives, Brad becomes a stockbroker and spends a lot of his gains on increasingly desperate feats of hedonism, most of them involving drugs and prostitutes of both sexes. While being interviewed by the FBI, he details some of them - one of the least spectacular involving a male prostitute injecting liquid psilocybin into his penis in broad daylight.
• Immortal Apathy: The story is centered around protagonist Brad Cohen getting stuck in a "Groundhog Day" Loop that begins in the womb and ends on the night before his fortieth birthday. Initially enjoying the experience, Brad finds himself becoming progressively alienated from humanity as his second chance expands into immortality; there's nobody he can relate to, he can't reveal his true nature without seeming insane, and the fact that he can't get his old life back only makes him more isolated from new relationships. At one point, he realizes that he's somehow managed to make it through an entire lifetime without making any friends at all.
• Immortal Genius: Deconstructed; Brad uses his knowledge of the future to become rich and famous, while also gaining mastery of various disciplines over the centuries - to the point that even scholars are impressed by his fluency in Hebrew. Unfortunately, being the Immortal Genius is very hard on Brad's sanity: Time Loop Fatigue destroys his ability to tell his past lives apart, leaving him showing up to jobs he was never hired for, forgetting conversations he had a short time ago, randomly predicting the future, and demonstrating skills that he shouldn't logically possess. By the end of this particular life, he's regarded by many as a Mad Oracle.
• Jews Love to Argue: Having had a respectable Orthodox upbringing, Brad Cohen decides to spice up his first repeat by voicing some radical left-wing beliefs (by 1980s standards) in front of a crowd at his local synagogue, taking great delight in sparking an argument between two politically-opposed rabbis in the process and watching as the exchange of Yiddish expletives becomes more and more heated as the squabble continues.
• Laser-Guided Karma: In the final chapter, the executive who rudely nixed Brad's project at the start of the novel ends up being fired for treating Brad so unpleasantly during the conference. In the process, Brad is given a second chance at success.
• Loser Protagonist: Brad in a nutshell, at least prior to using his foreknowledge to make himself a success in his new lives. Though he's forced to abandon his success in order to break the loop, the story ends with him finally being given a break.
• Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane: The exact nature of Brad's experiences are never fully elaborated upon, only hinted at. It's possible that Brad's experiences are real and he's actually trapped in an infinite loop and/or travelling the multiverse, but it's equally likely that he might just be dreaming. Indeed, when Juliet meets Brad again in a later cycle, she mentions that a special herbal concoction can apparently induce dream states in which time has no meaning... but at the same time, this cycle is told from Juliet's perspective, and it specifically notes that Brad has ceased to exist by 2015 - even though he usually vanishes from the cycle in 2010, suggesting that the timelines are real and are continuing onwards without him.
• Naked Nutter: After yet another failed attempt at replicating his life with Juliet in one of his later cycles, Brad goes for a very confused walk along Lake Michigan that ends with him taking all his clothes off - despite the bitter cold - and screaming at the sky.
• Obfuscating Stupidity: To avoid being the target of suspicion in his first life, Brad does his best to act his age; though he occasionally slips up and admits something about the future, he covers it up by acting as childishly as possible so it won't seem strange.
• Sanity Slippage: In later cycles, Brad begins to lose touch with his current life and begins muddling the details of what he's actually done, even showing up for work at jobs he had in the past. It gets so bad that his concerned parents take him to see a psychiatrist, who ultimately declares him sane... though that doesn't stop Brad from growing so tangled up in past lives that he forgets about the reporter who was interviewing him.
• The Stoner: Brad regularly smokes pot for inspiration - though given how little this actually works, it's really a means of preventing his depression from getting the better of him. In his second life, he continues his habit to the next level by stealing from his dad's stash. After breaking the loop and finding some success, his agent advises him to remain sober from now on - which Brad appears to be managing.
• Throw the Dog a Bone: After having no luck in his first life and an escalating case of depression in all his other ones, Brad finally awakens back in his old life - where his project is given a second chance, his bread-and-butter work is renewed, and Brad is able to appreciate what he has.
• Time Loop Fatigue: The endless cycle of his life wears on Brad after a while, and the fact that it always begins with four decades of progress being undone doesn't help. After a while, he actually starts to get the iterations muddled up, resulting in further despair as he starts blundering into roles he filled in previous lives.
• Time Travel for Fun and Profit: Brad frequently alters the course of his personal history in order to improve his life; among other things, he saves classic comics and electronic systems so they can be sold for massive profits, invests pocket money in stocks, and even uses his knowledge of future politics to make a life for himself as a successful journalist.
• Tragic Time Traveler: Brad Cohen initially benefits from his Back to the Womb time loop, but eventually suffers Time Loop Fatigue as a result of it always ending at his 40th birthday. Not only that, his marriage with Juliet never comes to pass, his daughters are never born, and even his mental faculties begin failing him in later loops, driving him all but insane. Luckily he eventually manages to break the loop.
• Wandering Walk of Madness: Brad's failure to reunite with his wife results in a long, despairing and largely directionless walk down to Lake Michigan; quite apart from the fact that he ends this walk by stripping nude and screaming, this is the point where his sanity really starts to unravel.
• Who Wants to Live Forever?: Over the course of numerous cycles, Brad grows increasingly depressed with the fact that he can't stay attached to a single lifetime even after living for centuries on end, and spends one cycle emotionally destroyed.