Abel Cotter

Abel Cotter is one of the main characters of the novel. The first half of The Repeat Room traces Abel’s storyline. In the narrative present Abel is 46 years old. He works as a garbageman and lives in a squalid apartment on Robus Avenue. His apartment and job have been fixtures in his life for roughly 20 years. About 18 or 19 years prior to the narrative present, Abel and his late wife Elaine had a son. When the baby was one month old, “[g]overnment people” showed up at the Cotters’ house in response to a call they had received from “one of the neighbors” (64). They then proceeded to take the child away from Abel and Elaine, deeming them “incompetent, emotionally incompetent, culturally incompetent” (64). Shortly thereafter, Elaine left Abel. Abel swiftly lost all sense of hope and his despair only worsened when he learned that Elaine died by suicide...