Big Machine
A Novel
Readers rate it 3.3 (18 on Hardcover)
386 pages · Released Aug 11, 2009 · One World
Content report card
Big Machine parent’s guide: what’s inside
Violence
LGBTQ+ themes
What it offers
Educational value
A note for parents
Big Machine is a sophisticated literary novel for adult readers that blends psychological horror with themes of redemption and faith. The protagonist is a recovering addict dealing with trauma from a suicide cult, and the narrative explores paranormal mysteries through a dark, dreamlike lens. While not graphically violent, the book contains mature psychological content, substance abuse, and existential dread that make it unsuitable for younger teens; it's best suited for readers 16+ who can handle complex, unsettling themes.
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From the publisher
A “haunting and fresh” (Los Angeles Times) novel about doubt, faith, and the monsters we carry within us that “[draws] comparisons to the work of Ralph Ellison and Thomas Pynchon” (The Wall Street Journal) “Big Machine is like nothing I’ve ever read, incredibly human and alien at the same time. Victor LaValle writes li... A “haunting and fresh” (Los Angeles Times) novel about doubt, faith, and the monsters we carry within us that “[draws] comparisons to the work of Ralph Ellison and Thomas Pynchon” (The Wall Street Journal) “Big Machine is like nothing I’ve ever read, incredibly human and alien at the same time. Victor LaValle writes like Gabriel García Márquez mixed with Edgar Allan Poe.”—Mos Def ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, Publishers Weekly Ricky Rice is a middling hustler with a lingering junk habit, a bum knee, and a haunted mind. A survivor of a suicide cult, he scrapes by as a porter at a bus depot in Utica, New York, until one day a mysterious letter arrives, summoning him to enlist in a band of paranormal investigators comprised of former addicts and petty criminals, all of whom had at some point in their wasted lives heard what may have been the voice of God. 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. Winner of the American Book Award and the Shirley Jackson Award
Shelved under
- Fiction
- Calibre Import
- Fantasy
- Science Fiction
- Fiction, occult & supernatural
- Fiction, psychological
- Parapsychologists
- Ex-drug addicts
- Belief and doubt
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ISBN 9780385530415 · One World