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A review by mattnixon
Big Machine by Victor LaValle
4.0
When evil is confronted by evil, does it see beauty? If you see evil for what it is, but allow it to do its evil thing to meets your ends, is that better of worse than not understanding the difference at all? Is doubt a more essential component of faith than belief?
Big Machine is an exploration of race, class, and faith in America dressed up as the strangest genre mash-up I can remember: Ralph Ellison and Gabriel Garcia Marquez team up for a supernatural thriller? Is it a comedy, a horror, or a religious parable? Yes. It is all of these things, as well as a damn fine character study.
Through Rickey Rice, a 40-year old, recovering heroin-addict janitor, LaValle provides a complex, fully-fleshed man to takes us on a surpemely weird (though unevenly paced, at times) ride.
I'll stop here, as I I'm not capable of doing the book justice. It's such a strange, funny, insightful and seemingly trivial piece of genre fiction, one whose big questions are often posed in situations incongruent with the questions. Like ninjas, the more probing questions in the subtext clung beneath the text, silently slipping into my brain and spring violently into action later.
Witty, fun and unlike anything I've read before, I recommend Big Machine and look forward to reading LaValle's next work.
Big Machine is an exploration of race, class, and faith in America dressed up as the strangest genre mash-up I can remember: Ralph Ellison and Gabriel Garcia Marquez team up for a supernatural thriller? Is it a comedy, a horror, or a religious parable? Yes. It is all of these things, as well as a damn fine character study.
Through Rickey Rice, a 40-year old, recovering heroin-addict janitor, LaValle provides a complex, fully-fleshed man to takes us on a surpemely weird (though unevenly paced, at times) ride.
I'll stop here, as I I'm not capable of doing the book justice. It's such a strange, funny, insightful and seemingly trivial piece of genre fiction, one whose big questions are often posed in situations incongruent with the questions. Like ninjas, the more probing questions in the subtext clung beneath the text, silently slipping into my brain and spring violently into action later.
Witty, fun and unlike anything I've read before, I recommend Big Machine and look forward to reading LaValle's next work.