A REVIEW OF NEAL POLLACK’S REPEAT
Novels are great entertainment. Especially to people with a highly functioning imagination. I love novels that surprise me. Repeat, is that book! I fell in love with the strangeness yet relatability of the book. It's a book about time travel.
Repeat is about a man called Brad Cohen who is about to clock forty and happens to be going through a midlife crisis. Brad is at a point in life where everything SUCKED. He moved to Southern California with his wife in search of greener pastures, but so far, the picture is glum. He is faced with the constant lack and loss of opportunity in his career. In short, he hates his life.
Juliet, his wife, is a very beautiful woman who throughout the book remained a ray of sunshine in Brad's life. Juliet loves herbs and medicine, which she made okay money from selling to people. She helps Brad out with the finances in the family. They make a pretty good team.
On Brad's fortieth birthday, after a nice dinner at a restaurant to celebrate, Brad had a fit. He started to cry and complain about how much he hated everything and Juliet tried to console him. Then, Juliet went into her herbal workspace, and returned with this herb. Brad asked what it was, and she told him it was something to relax him, an experiment.
This is where the book gets interesting. Earlier in the day, Brad, like many writers in L.A went to pitch his story to some people about an infinite time loop. He couldn't finish pitching and was given the appointment to come back the next day. That night, after drinking the herb his wife gave him, Brad was reborn
Brad Cohen, became a baby again with the mind of a 40 year old. Hard to imagine, I know. He became stuck in an infinite time loop, forced to relive the first forty years of his life again and again.
I liked reading Repeat for many reasons. The first would be the use of humor. The satire and sarcasm were not lost on me. I laughed at how accurate he described his life and the toxic Hollywood lifestyle. Brad Cohen was my favorite character and frankly the most relatable.
Many of us, although we hate to admit we hate where we are in life. We feel stuck and feel like we could be doing something more, but the universe seems against that idea. Slowly, this starts to take a toll on us. We cannot express happiness as it is hard to pretend that everything is fine although it isn't. Brad Cohen becomes bitter and he begins to lose appeal in the things that actually matter. He couldn't fully love his children. Weed and drugs became a temporary escape. Also, Brad never went overboard with his vices. He always knew his limit.
Repeat is a captivating read from start to finish. I liked how every single time Brad was born, he was different. He was, according to Goodreads, a successful political pundit, a game-show champion, a playboy, and a master manipulator of the stock market. Each time, tired of life but on different levels, till he reached a point where nothing appealed to him anymore because he had seen it all. Every single fortieth birthday Brad becomes a baby again, with the knowledge of the previous life. The lesson here is regardless of how things get, there's always one or two things in life to be grateful for. In Brad's case, it was his family. Especially his wife who he had to learn to appreciate the hard way.
In conclusion, Repeat is a great book and I strongly recommend it. If I had to rate it, I say it is a 9 out of 10. This is because of how complex the story is and how beautifully written it is.
