Big Machine, Victor LaValle
Big Machine, Victor LaValle
List: $20.49 | Sale: $14.34
Club: $10.24

Big Machine
A Novel

Author: Victor LaValle

Narrator: Sean Crisden

Unabridged: 12 hr 13 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Tantor Media

Published: 12/05/2017

Synopsis

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.

About Victor LaValle

Victor LaValle's novels have been included in best-of-the-year lists by the New York Times Book Review, Los Angeles Times, the Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, the Nation, and Publishers Weekly, among others. He has been the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, an American Book Award, the Shirley Jackson Award, and the Key to Southeast Queens. He lives in New York City with his wife and kids and teaches at Columbia University.

Reviews

Goodreads review by christa

Maybe you just broke up with your boyfriend. Maybe you haven't had a boyfriend in, like, eons. Along comes this guy: good-lookingish, sorta funny, kinda interesting. People you like also like him. You shrug and give him a whirl. You just cannot catch the fever, though. There is something off. Cogs t......more

Goodreads review by Edan

For the first 200 or so pages, Big Machine was my favorite book of the year. It's smart, it's really fucking funny, the world I was pulled into was fascinating and weird and utterly believable, even as it was absurd and playful. And I loved the narrator. Ricky Rice is probably one of the best voices......more

Goodreads review by Paul

"Horror fiction at its best is in the business of pushing back the barriers, or risking the absurd in order to reach the sublime.”–Ramsey Campbell (from the foreword of Alan Moore’s SAGA OF THE SWAMP THING, book 1) I need to go back and amend my top 10 books of 2009 list and put Victor LaValle’s amaz......more

Goodreads review by Kemper

If you had a really important job that you needed done, a critical mission that the entire fate of your life’s work depended on, would you send a 40 year-old ex-heroin junkie with a bad leg out to take care of it? No? Neither would I. Ricky Rice might have saved himself some serious trouble if he si......more

Goodreads review by aPriL does feral sometimes

The name 'Big Machine' is actually a title given by a character in this story describing the corrosive operation of doubt on the human soul. 'Big Machine' is also a story that is a religious allegory. Wait, don't run away! At least just listen a minute. It also has a lot of what could be labeled mag......more

Add to Cart
Add to Wish List