The Loop
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4.6 • 9 Ratings
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- $8.99
Publisher Description
Lyman, a thirty-year-old orphan, is sipping coffee on the front steps of the trailer he calls home one morning, when a ninety-year-old parrot arrives with a beakful of cryptic sayings -- such as "That which hath wings shall tell the matter" -- and a mysterious past. Convinced that heeding the bird's wisdom will lead him to answers about himself he so desperately seeks, Lyman combines his night job as a courtesy patrolman, circling the highway that loops around Fort Worth, with days in the library. Together with Fiona, the loquacious librarian, he traces his adopted pet's origins, and while what Lyman ultimately discovers may not help him piece together his own past, it paves the way for a future he never imagined.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The protagonist of Coomer's deliciously quirky and perceptive fourth novel (after A Flatland Fable ) is Lyman, 30, a lovable loner (he has never known his parents) who works nights for the Texas highway department, driving around the Loop that circles Fort Worth. In this dark, endless orbit--a subtly shifting metaphor for Lyman's own life--he aids stranded motorists, collects debris for his trophy collection and buries animals killed by cars. When an aging but spry parrot with a beakful of cryptic sayings barges through the screen door of Lyman's trailer and upsets his routine, Lyman's deeper humanity is oddly stirred. He decides that finding ``the owner behind the bird . . . would be akin to finding the message behind the universe.'' To this end he enlists the aid of Fiona, a sexy librarian at the college where he has enrolled in a potpourri of courses from French to furniture repair. Together, they research parrots and try to track the sources of the bird's perplexingly hieratic utterances. The quest turns up surprises, not always the answers Lyman thinks he seeks. Increasingly when he returns to the nocturnal exitless Loop, he sees his beloved highway in a new light as a place of ``aridity'' and estrangement. Despite a jarringly abrupt switch to Fiona's viewpoint late in the narrative, the denouement both heartens and satisfies.
