Big Machine by Victor Lavalle
Ricky Rice is a middle-aged hustler with a lingering junk habit, a bum knee, and a haunted mind. The sole survivor of a suicide cult, he spends his days scraping by as a porter at a bus depot in Utica, New York. Until one day a letter arrives, reminding him of a vow he once made and summoning him to Vermont's remote Northeast Kingdom to fulfill it. There, Ricky is inducted into a band of paranormal investigators comprised of former addicts and petty criminals, all of whom have at some point in their wasted lives heard the Voice: a murmur on the wind, a disembodied shout, a whisper in an empty room. All these may or may not have been messages from God. Their mission is to find the Voice - and figure out what it wants. Big Machine takes us from Ricky's childhood in a matrilineal cult housed in a New York City tenement to his near-death experience in the basement of an Iowa house owned by a man named Murder. And to his final confrontation with an army of true believers - and with his own past. Infused with the wonder of a disquieting dream and laced with Victor LaValle's fiendish comic sensibility, Big Machine is a mind-rattling mystery about doubt, faith, and the monsters we carry within us. Big Machine named: �American Book Award 2010 �Shirley Jackson Award 2009 - Winner - Best Novel �10 Best Books of 2009 - Publisher's Weekly �Favorite Fiction of 2009 - Chicago Tribune �Best Science Fiction of 2009 - Los Angeles Times �Best Science Fiction & Fantasy - Washington Post �Most Valuable Fiction Book of 2009 - The Nation �Ernest J. Gaines Award for Literary Excellence 2010 Winner
Like his spiritual forebears, Chester Himes and Nelson Algren, he speaks for the unsung so we can hear their voiceListen -- Cathi Unsworth * The Guardian *
Religion and money are the two great American themes, and in Big Machine LaValle brings them together by creating a world where faith cannot pay its bills and greed is the only force in which anyone can reliably believe -- Laurence Scott * Times Literary Supplement *
Intriguing and wonderfully enjoyable * The Sun *
an elegiac monster of a book that could be the bastard child of The X-Files and Mikhail Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita -- Peter Millar * The Times *
A rich, textured story structured like a crime thriller and told in vivid but unshowy prose. Thematically meaty...recommended * SFX *
Religion and money are the two great American themes, and in Big Machine LaValle brings them together by creating a world where faith cannot pay its bills and greed is the only force in which anyone can reliably believe -- Laurence Scott * Times Literary Supplement *
Intriguing and wonderfully enjoyable * The Sun *
an elegiac monster of a book that could be the bastard child of The X-Files and Mikhail Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita -- Peter Millar * The Times *
A rich, textured story structured like a crime thriller and told in vivid but unshowy prose. Thematically meaty...recommended * SFX *
Victor LaValle is the author of the short story collection Slapboxing with Jesus and two novels, The Ecstatic and Big Machine. He has been the recipient of numerous awards including a Whiting Writers' Award, a United States Artists Ford Fellowship, a Guggenheim Fellowship and the key to Southeast Queens.
| SKU | Unavailable |
| ISBN 13 | 9781842433645 |
| ISBN 10 | 1842433644 |
| Title | Big Machine |
| Author | Victor Lavalle |
| Condition | Unavailable |
| Binding Type | Paperback |
| Publisher | Bedford Square Publishers |
| Year published | 2011-03-24 |
| Number of pages | 384 |
| Prizes | Winner of American Book Award 2010, Winner of Ernest J. Gaines Award for Literary Excellence 2010, Winner of Shirley Jackson Awards: Novel Category 2009 |
| Cover note | Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary. |
| Note | Unavailable |