Looped

by Andrew Winston

A remarkably assured and accomplished debut novel that encompasses the bursting life of contemporary Chicago, Looped tells the separate stories of a diverse group of Chicagoans-black, brown, and white, gay, straight, and bi-as their lives unfold in diverging and (occasionally) converging ways over the course of the year 2000. Among the characters are the family of a middle-class black postman whose runaway daughter has just learned she’s pregnant; a gifted half-Vietnamese high-schooler whose troubled father spies on the son he abandoned years earlier; a tradition-bound Greek diner owner whose upwardly mobile daughter, embarrassed by her ethnic roots, is snarled in a loveless marriage; a gay chef whose shaky relationship is strained by the visit of his closeted lover’s uncle, a Catholic priest; and the motley members of an up-and-coming band shaken by the breakup of its ambitious lead guitarist and his sexually confused songwriter girlfriend. Ambitious, sprawling, engrossing, multifaceted, insightful, and readable, Looped explodes with a life and vitality that mirrors the multicultural reality of 21st-century Chicago, where the families that sustain us are more likely to be those we’ve created than those we’re born to.

Genres: Fiction

414 pages, Kindle Edition

First published February 1, 2005

Reviews

[Corina · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is excellent. I just finished it a little while ago and am sitting here thinking about the characters, still. It is set in Chicago in the year 2000 and follows a diverse group of people (ethnically, socially, financially, age, sexual orientation) from January 1 to December 31. At the beginning it is a little bit difficult in that there are so many characters introduced all at once and out introductions to them are sometimes no more than a short paragraph. However, that changes very quickly as we are pulled into the lives of the characters and how they interact with each other. Excellent. Excellent. Excellent!

[Ola · Rating 4 out of 5]

Looped chronicles the year 2000, and the lives of several individuals from diverse backgrounds. White, Black, Asian, lesbian, gay, rich, middle-class, old, young...each person faces a separate dilemma in life.

Andrew Winston does a masterful job of intertwining the lives of each of these people. This is not your typical more-than-one-point-of-view narrative. Looped is really a book worth checking out.

[Carolyn · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the only book that I've read in my lifetime that actually warranted written praise to the author. At first I was overwhelmed with how many different plots are introduced rather quickly, and I wondered how on earth these would all piece together. By the end of the book, I was so impressed with the writing, I couldn't stop raving about it.

[Victoria · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow! I absolutely adored this book. The description caught my eye originally because it made it seem as though the whole book took place in Rogers Park. While initially I was surprised and rather disappointed that this was not the case, I got swept up in the rich and beautifully written story. With its myriad of characters - from old to young, many different races, sexualities and religions, the true main character is Chicago itself. And the author completely captured it - it was more than just mentioning places, he managed to capture a sense of home within this book. I loved it. Following the timeline of just one year, was great but I did not want it to end. I can't wait to read anything else he has written - though I think this will be a tough act to out-do.

[Rhiannon · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very confusing. The story of lives of different Chicagoans from different backgrounds.