Loop

Mexican writer Lozano’s PEN Translation Prize–winning novel, her English-language debut, pulls off a dizzying chronicle of a woman’s antics as she waits in Mexico City for her boyfriend to return from Spain. Jonás left following the death of his mother, and the unnamed narrator has been left to indulge in her obsessions, including her Scribe and Ideal notebooks, which she uses for diary entries and fiction writing, respectively; David Bowie’s “Wild is the Wind” (she prefers the original recording; Jonás likes the Nina Simone cover); and the process of recovering from an unspecified accident that took place before Jonás’s departure (her doctor recommended daily afternoon walks). As she turns these obsessions over in her head and repeats her routine, she begins to unravel (“Unlearning yourself is more important than knowing yourself”). She imagines one of her notebooks as the sea, and its lines as waves. Waiting for Jonás, meanwhile, becomes an existential, Beckettesque situation. Lozano’s playful prose and imagery propel the book forward, despite its loose shape and lack of plot. It adds up to a delightful meditation on waiting, love, and the inevitability of change. Agent: Laura Palomares, Agencia Literaria Carmen Balcells. (June)