The Loop

Every night, devoted Texas Highway Department employee Lyman drives around the seemingly endless loop that surrounds the city of Fort Worth, helping stranded drivers, removing dead animals, and otherwise seeing that the road is clear. His is a life of monotony that serves to keep order and balance in his lonely existence--that is, until a chance encounter with a very intelligent parrot opens his eyes to the world around him. As Lyman, narrator Paul Michael Garcia speaks with the contented tone of a man who fails to recognize the isolation of his existence. But when Garcia assumes the role of Fiona the librarian, he slyly adapts Lyman's tone to that of a man who is being rapidly awakened to new possibilities. L.B. (c) AudioFile 2010, Portland, Maine

September 28, 1992
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.