A New Yorker story that either breaks convention or breaks the rules of narrative

Novelist J. Robert Lennon has a story, The Loop, in current New Yorker that, depending on your viewpoint, is either ground-breaking or rule-breaking. The story begins as a piece right in the vein of realistic, socially conscious fiction: A middle-aged woman is dealing w/ her sorrow and loneliness post-divorce and she signs on as a volunteer for an agency that collects donated furniture and delivers the furniture to people in need in the (small, college-town) community. After the set-up, we follow her on a day of deliveries, which Lennon describes in meticulous detail, so much so that I wondered where this story was heading. It's a social commentary, of course, in particular as we meet some of the more desperate recipients, one of whom is living in squalor. A few odd things happen over the course of the day, however: at least twice (maybe 3 times?) a piece of furniture (a bed frame, a futon) just seems to disappear or, conversely, to just show up. No clear explanation is offered. Hm. Then, after she completes her deliveries she realizes she's in a time loop (see title) and will repeat endlessly the day's deliveries. Huh?? Yes, anything can happen in a piece of literary fiction - including disappearing furniture and an endless time loop. But the author bears some responsibility for establishing a context in which we can believe and accept any of the events that ensue in a story. Read a Murakmi story and you are prepared from the outset to accept disappearing cats and talking birds. Read an Updike story and - you're not. It's one thing, in my view, to write a piece of speculative or supernatural fiction, and grounding the supernatural in a base of realistic fiction is probably a good strategy. That said, does it make any sense to just drop the supernatural into the midst of a realistic narrative? What's the point? Is this woman delusional (it doesn't seem so)? Is the whole story an allegory, i.e., the cycle of wealth and poverty in our culture is a sort of endless loop (this seems to give the author more credit than is due - it's a good observation, but couldn't he make more of this insight?)?  It's one thing for a writer to be unconventional, but it's something else to break with the standard conventions of the unwritten contract between writer and reader: Play be the rules you've established.