Max Lesser, the novel’s protagonist, is the successful author of a series of children’s books and the less successful author of novels for adults (much the same as Hoban himself, who is the creator of Frances the badger, a well-known children’s book character). As the novel opens, Max finds himself wandering about London, slightly confused and a little forgetful. Worse, he is being followed by a hideous dwarf who wants to be held and carried around town. Even worse, no one else can see the dwarf. Adding to Max’s troubles is an ongoing, contentious conversation with his rational mind, often about why he can’t seem to get started on either of his two new projects (an adult novel and a new Charlotte Prickles the Hedgehog book).

Slowly, Max begins to realize that the dwarf represents something ominous, and he seeks help in finding out just what. It is revealed that the dwarf is, indeed, an Indian demon, the personification of Forgetfulness, and it’s dogging Max because, somehow, his old girlfriend, Lola, has sent it to erase Max’s memories of her. But why? And how?

It all sounds incredible and needlessly complicated, but Hoban uses the surreal situations - the dwarf, Max’s argumentative mind, conversations between Max and the characters he creates, etc. - as the frame for a traditional and heartwarming story about the relationship between Max and Lola, which is told in flashbacks that lead the reader back to Max’s current predicament. The relationship is an intense one which begins when Max wanders into a record shop where Lola works and immediately declares that she is his destiny. Lola buys it and falls completely in love with Max. Max, unfortunately, is still a bit immature to confront his destiny, and he is unable, despite the protestations of his mind, to resist the charms of Lula Mae Flowers, a beautiful Texan that Max encounters one afternoon in an art gallery. The ensuing romantic triangle is sad and volatile, and Max’s vacillation between the two women eventually leads to a coincidence that brings the emotional (and professional) structure of his life tumbling down around him.

One critic has said Her Name Was Lola is too much style wrapped around too little substance, but it is precisely the opposite. Followers of the avant garde are more likely to be offended by Hoban’s book because it dares to use its formal gimmickry to examine a traditional human narrative. Rather than being content to circle back upon itself philosophically, as these sorts of endeavors tend to do, to get caught up in self-conscious reflexiveness or elementary existentialism, Hoban’s book seizes the opportunity to say something real. For the author, the point is not in the theory or in the form, but, quite unfashionably, in the plot.

This is not to say that Her Name Was Lola is shallow. The book’s contemplation of memory touches not only upon the way that memory helps us to construct our image of ourselves and those closest to us, but also upon the way that pan-generational memory allows us to bridge the distance between ourselves and our ancestors. Frighteningly, the book suggests that the absence of such memory can pull away all our emotional and moral underpinnings, forcing us to start anew whether we want to or not, to recreate ourselves from scratch without an example to follow. Legacy is a fragile thing, Hoban implies, and we must guard it carefully.