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Hardcover: 384 pages �Big Machine is like nothing I've ever read,
incredibly human and alien at the same time. LaValle writes like
Gabriel Garcia Marquez mixed with Edgar Allen Poe, but this is
even more than that. He's written the first great book of the
next America.��Mos
Def A fiendishly imaginative comic novel about doubt, faith, and the monsters we carry within us. Ricky Rice was as good as invisible: a middling hustler, recovering dope fiend, and traumatized suicide cult survivor running out the string of his life as a porter at a bus depot in Utica, New York. Until one day a letter appears, summoning him to the frozen woods of Vermont. There, Ricky is inducted into a band of paranormal investigators comprised of former addicts and petty criminals, all of whom had at some point in their wasted lives heard The Voice: a mysterious murmur on the wind, a disembodied shout, or a whisper in an empty room that may or may not be from God. Evoking the disorienting wonder of writers like Haruki Murakami and Kevin Brockmeier, but driven by Victor LaValle's perfectly pitched comic sensibility BIG MACHINE is a mind-rattling literary adventure about sex, race, and the eternal struggle between faith and doubt.
Format:
Paperback, 288pp. The Ecstatic was selected for AALBC.com's March 2003 Reading List Victor LaValle has already established himself as "one of the most eloquent
voices of the approaching century" (Kirkus Reviews), a writer of darkly humorous
tales full of haunting beauty, astonishing leaps of imagination, and language
that "crackles and hums" (Chicago Tribune). The Ecstatic is LaValle's debut
novel, a startling tale of love, horror, sex, insanity, faith, morbid obesity,
and the modern American family.
Paperback: 224 pages Winner of the PEN Open Book Award! March 2000 AALBC.com Best Seller "Twelve original and interconnected stories, Victor D. LaValle's astonishing, violent, and funny debut offers harrowing glimpses at the vulnerable lives of young people who struggle not only to come of age, but to survive the city streets." "In "ancient history," two best friends graduating from high school fight to be the one to leave first for a better world; each one wants to be the fortunate son. In "pops," an African-American boy meets his father, a white cop from Connecticut, and tries not to care. And in "kids on Colden street" a boy is momentarily uplifted by the arrival of a younger sister only to discover that brutality leads only to brutality in the natural order of things."
Related Links
Lavalle's work is also included in: Step into a World: A Global Anthology of the New
Black Literature Washington Post Article
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Big
Machine
The Ecstatic
Slapboxing
with Jesus
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