Loop's Progress is an uproarious novel about coming of age that reflects the gritty reality of modern urban America. Through a narrative that loops and winds with the elliptic brilliance of Gabriel Garcia Marquez and the wacky logic of John Kennedy Toole, there emerges the story of Jarvis Loop's youth and adolescence in a working-class neighborhood that has deteriorated until it is little more than a slum. The memorable cast of characters includes Red, Jarvis's larger-than-life father, who dominates his family with his warmth and incipient violence; Jarvis's mother, Helen, who keeps a bevy of religious statuary in her living room; Neda, his three-hundred-pound sister, who devours books as fast as she does chocolate; and an entirely original assortment of neighbours and friends.

Fiction