The Loop

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Joe Coomer's eccentric fourth novel features two unlikely loners. First is thirty-year-old Lyman, who works the night shift as a courtesy patrolman on the highway that circles Fort Worth, Texas. Lyman's off-duty existence is no less of a loop. Hardened from a childhood as an orphan and convinced that the world is an arbitrary place, he limits his daytime routine to an unending series of such practical college courses as plumbing, aeronautics and sign language. If life makes no sense, he can at least be prepared for all its eventualities. But nothing could have prepared him for the dramatic entrance of the second loner - a ninety-year-old parrot - into his life. Lyman's sympathy for the orphaned bird's plight soon turns to obsession with its cryptic sayings. What does it mean by such phrases as "That which hath wings shall tell the matter", "I'm an eagle" and "MA17"? Lyman resolves to locate the parrot's original owners and the source of its utterances. Fiona, the bafflingly spontaneous librarian at the junior college, volunteers her services in researching the parrot's past - a past that proves less elusive than Lyman's own - and in the process begins to lead Lyman out of his own loop. The Loop, Joe Coomer's funniest and darkest novel to date, takes a wonderfully refreshing look at the nature of chance and identity.