The Endless Week

The debut novel from Vazquez (The Hand of the Hand, a poetry collection) offers a stimulating and surreal exploration of thought patterns and internet addiction. Teen poet and vlogger Salim lives in public housing somewhere in France with his older sister, Sara; their cleanliness-obsessed father, who is unemployed; and their paralyzed grandmother. Salim has dropped out of school, much to the chagrin of a concerned social worker, and spends his days posting on social media and hanging out online with his lone friend, Jonathan, who’s often high on pills. When his grandmother’s nurses reveal that she will die without a blood transfusion, Salim begins searching for his long-absent mother, hoping her blood will heal his grandmother. Vazquez’s novel is less concerned with plot than with getting inside each character’s head, whether it’s Jonathan as he texts (“Emojis bounced in Jonathan’s hand. Their teeth were a straight, white line. If you looked at them long enough, you couldn’t tell anymore if they were crying or laughing”), or Salim after he posts a poem (“Words were invented by the dead. All the words that travel through our throats have traveled through the throats of the dead”). Vazquez’s commitment to swerving from one bizarre idea to another pays off. (Sept.)