Her Name Was Lola by Russell Hoban

'In Hindu mythology,' says Max, 'there's a dwarf demon of Forgetfulness called Apasmara Purusha. If this guy's Lola gets really pissed off she might find a way of putting Apasmara on to him to wipe out the memory of her.'

'That's really nasty,' says his mind. 'I like it. But what would get her that pissed off? Would sleeping with another woman one time do it?'

'I don't know,' says Max. 'It was just a passing thought. I doubt that I'll do anything with it--I'm not sure I like this guy well enough to write about him.'

One day, Max, a semi-successful but oft-blocked writer, sees a strange black demon crawling around on the ground. He lifts it up--or perhaps it jumps on him--and he discovers that he's become burdened by Apasmara, the Hindu demon of forgetfulness. What he has forgotten is Lola: the beautiful, intelligent woman he once felt was his destiny. Max hasn't seen Lola since a brief and unfortunate affair with Lula Mae, a gorgeous Texan, and impregnated both women. The last he saw of Lola, she was crashing her Jaguar--with both of them in it, and the unborn child of course--out of shock and anger at the news. Max doesn't even know if the child he supposedly fathered with Lola is alive, and now it seems that Lola has put the demon on him to make him forget her completely.

Once upon a time I was amazed by how different Russell Hoban's books are: medieval fables, post-apocalyptic epics, wistful and turtle-centric elegies, madcap anthropomorphic frenzies--but somewhere along the way they started to seem similar, even repetitive. The London of Her Name Was Lola is recognizable from Angelica's Grotto and especially The Medusa Frequency; I think it even shares a few minor characters with that book. The tricks are the same: the blurring of lines between reality and hallucination, the dragged-in bits of religion and mythology, and of course, the personification, even down to Max talking to his own mind. Some of them are successful, here, even extremely so, but I couldn't help feeling that something about the book was a little tired.

Some stuff I did find interesting: Max, like Hoban, is a successful writer of children's novels; Hoban wrote about Frances the Badger, and for Max it's Charlotte Prickles the hedgehog. He writes adult books, too, when he can get past "Page One," and as Max struggles with the fallout of his infidelity, he begins writing a story about "Moe Levy" who cheats on "Lulu" with "Laura." The doubling of names, the way the life is worked out on the page, like a fractal you can always keep zooming in on, is simple but effective, and I especially liked how, despite Max's attempts to make "Moe" reenact his own foibles, the rebellious character simply abstains from flirting with "Laura" and redoubles his commitment to the women he truly loves. I also liked Lola's B-plot, in which she spends years learning an Eastern instrument called the sarod in order to write a raga that will make Max forget her, only to find that in her studies she comes to a kind of peace with Max's carelessness toward her. But in the end, when I try to remember Her Name Was Lola, I'll probably only be able to come up with details from The Medusa Frequency instead.