Loop is the first book I’ve read from Mexican author Brenda Lozano, but it won’t be the last. This is a book that surprised me and made me feel highly strange but in a good way. I wanted to write and on the other hand, wanted to wait for someone. I wanted to have a black cat. We would spend Sundays with him listening to the radio at home.
Loop is a book told by a woman waiting for her boyfriend, Jonás. After his mother’s death, Jonás goes to Spain with his family. However, this little holiday becomes a bit longer. We read what our narrator writes while waiting for her boyfriend. We witness where she lives, her friends, what she comes across throughout the day. From dwarves to notebooks and the bloody history of Mexico to a rich woman of the aristocracy, we encounter lots of exciting things.
I hope this beautiful book, written in short chapters, will affect you as it affected me. Enjoy!
Loop
Loop is a love story narrated from the point of view of a woman who waits for her boyfriend Jonás to return from a trip to Spain. They met when she was recovering from an accident and he had just lost his mother. Soon after that, they were living together. She waits for him as a sort of contemporary Penelope who, instead of knitting only to then un-knit, she writes and erases her thoughts in a notebook: Proust, a dwarf, a swallow, a dreamy cat or David Bowie singing ‘Wild is the Wind’, make up some of the strands that are woven together in this tapestry of longing and waiting.
Written in a sometimes irreverent style, in short fragments that at points are more like haikus than conventional narrative prose, this is a truly original reflection on love, relationships, solitude and the aesthetics and purpose of writing.
Brenda Lozano
Brenda Lozano is a Mexican writer. She studied literature at the Universidad Iberoamericana. She has published two novels, Todo nada and Cuaderno ideal, and a book of short fiction Cómo piensan las piedras. Cuaderno ideal has been translated into English by Annie McDermott under the title Loop.
Reading this book contributed to these challenges:
