Quirky and twisty-clever, but a bit tired. The characters are sketches; the usual quick characterization I expect from the Hernandezes never quite happens. ( )

Teenager Miguel wakes up from a year-long coma, which he appears to have willed himself into due to his ennui with small-town life and then willed himself out of with thoughts of reuniting with his girlfriend Lita. Upon waking up, he finds some things to be exactly the same (his wrought relationship with his grandparents, his missing mother, his jailed father) while other things have morphed or mutated (his sudden inability to move quickly, his girlfriend's newfound interest in urban legends, and a sneaky suspicion that Lita and their mutual friend/bandmate, Romeo, might be involved romantically as well).

Reading this book is a rather different experience; some of it is seems jumpy - like a stream-of-consciousness narrative - and elements of the surreal pop up quite a bit. Some ideas are introduced that are never quite explained, such as Miguel's seemingly out-of-nowhere belief that his mother was murdered by his father and buried in the nearby lemon orchard, a place that is shrouded in a mist of local lore. Minor characters appear with neuroses that are not fully explored, like Miguel's sexpot tutor who seems to be suffering from some sort of paranoid delusional. All of this provides plenty of food for thought and is rife with symbolism to be explored.

But then things take a very weird turn, even for a book like this with an unusual premise at the start. Suddenly the story switches so that it's Lita, not Miguel, who was in the year-long coma. Some bits of the plot remain the same, while others are significantly changed. Another switch occurs a tad further on, and it's now Romeo as the one in the coma. It's all very confusing to me and, based on the numerous reviews I hunted down online, it's made for an unclear reading for many with few compelling interpretations. This is certainly a book that will leave you thinking, but I'm not sure how much you'll be able to make heads or tails out of it.

The black-and-white illustrations are fairly basic, but they seemed fitting to the story at hand. ( )

Magnífica tècnica de dibuix amb blanc i negre. Després de llegir-lo m'ha passat com amb algunes pel·lícules surrealistes contemporànies, com Mulholland Drive de Lynch: amb el que he entès m'he muntat la meva pròpia pel·lícula. ( )

A strange story about bored teenagers in a quiet town. Three teens experience life more slowly after willing themselves into a coma for a year. Multiple disjointed personalities. Odd experiences in the lemon orchards. ( )

Sloth is a hard book to describe. The first part tells the story of a teenage boy who has just woken up from a year-long, medically unexplainable coma. Together with his girlfriend and his best friend they stroll the streets of their comatose little suburb. Then it shifts and it is his girlfriend who has been in a coma for a year, and their roles are completely altered. The friend is now a rock star and her boyfriend is very popular and doesn't know she exists.

I honestly don't have much to say about this book. Definitely interesting and weird, and I know probably talking about the mal du siècle manifested by our disenchanted, suburban youth, but honestly, that's all I got. ( )