"They just... opened him."I'm on a good run of wickedly entertaining offbeat novels. First John Dies at the End and now this gem. Other than the exceptional The Ballad of Black Tom, I've had a pretty ho-hum experience with LaValle's work. In my opinion, The Ecstatic, while decent enough, is his worst book. And The Devil in Silver is definitely his best. But even when he's not firing on all cylinders, he's insanely readable. There's something about the guy's writing that does it for me, man. His

LaValle spins a unique horror tale with THE DEVIL IN SILVER. Pepper is a great character, and this story really keeps you guessing about exactly what the hell is going on in this institution. Portions of the book reminded me of ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO'S NEST, but LaValle creates his own dynamic spin on sanity and psychosis. A wonderful, original novel!

A super-sized Theseus takes on external and internal monsters within the vividly rendered walls of a mental institution in Queens. Always surprising, full of three-D characters, a little bit scary (for unexpected reasons) but even more poignant. Most importantly, Victor LaValle's prose is just plain fun.

It’s October—time to scare the pants off ourselves! I have been planning my creepy fall reading list for several weeks now. As soon as the daytime temperatures start flirting with the 60s (even if they boing back up like they’re attached to a bungee cord a few days later), it’s like an alarm goes off in my head. For some people, that alarm signals pumpkin spice time, but for me it means I start inhaling all the scary shit I can get my hands on. First up: The Devil in Silver. I have wanted to rea...

A sketch-ily run mental hospital in Queens with Dickensian characters, and a devil with a buffalo head terrorizing the patients. What more could you want? LaValle's imagination is only matched by his narrative daring. There are times when--seemingly--the plot meanders, or there is not plot, and times where he goes metafictional, or into the POV of a big rat, and yet, somehow (still not quite sure how he did it) it all fits together and the story is about the lost and the found, so, you know, it'...

I am just as shocked that I found "The Devil in Silver" to be a three star read. This was a tough one for me to get through. I almost DNFed it at one point because I just found myself getting bored with this book. I think the reason why is that it started off as kind of a potential horror book that turned to thriller/mystery than a dialogue of sorts on how persons in our country are treated with mental health issues, to the current state of prejudice that exists in the U.S., to immigration, back...

Sometimes I will continue reading a book even when I know its hopeless purely out of a sense of loyalty to the author. This was certainly the case here. I appreciated all of Mr. LaValle's efforts, and I actually quite like the way he writes, but the plot was just all over the place, and the premise of the story, while initially really captivating, takes several strange turns and completely loses itself, eventually becoming unrecognizable. In fact, the novel I finished was almost a completely dif...

A joyous marriage of literary aesthetics and genre gratification, The Devil in Silver storms the thematic territory staked by Ken Kesey in 1962; but unlike One Flew Over the Cukoo's Nest, LaValle's novel offers a more compassionate look at the human interactions between mental health professionals and their captive patients, that is, whenever the author isn't bringing down righteous fury on a publicly funded system that profits off of neglect, and how this relationship bears a troubling resembla...

I was looking forward to this horror novel, and—as often happens when I look forward to something—I was disappointed. First of all, the idea that it was written by a young black man—well, young as far as I’m concerned, he was forty when he wrote it—a fan of H.P. Lovecraft who wrote another book based on Lovecraft’s most racist short story (The Ballad of Black Tom, based on “The Horror at Red Hook”) intrigued me. Plus, the book has a first-class “elevator pitch”: think One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s

3.5 Stars.Pepper has entered the mental institute. No real reason why. He is not insane. Well not much. He was taking up for his sometime girlfriend against her ex-husband and assaulted 3 plainclothes cops. He is supposed to be confined for 72 hours. Yeah right.These characters are so fully described that I felt like I was right there with them. Shut up. I know it's the nut house. Dorry! I have a thing for old broads and this one was spectacular! I kinda think she might be me in a few years.

5🌟It's the society that's untethered yet we're institutionalized.

Book Info: Genre: Literary Fiction (per publisher); Dark Fiction (per me)Reading Level: AdultRecommended for: Anyone who likes a great storyMy Thoughts: This was one of those books I picked up because there wasn’t anything else that really appealed to me, and it just looked strange enough that I would enjoy it. Pepper seems like the kind of character I would enjoy, and I also tend to like stories sent in mental institutions. But imagine my delight when I found descriptions like this one: “...Qu...

Calling this a horror novel feels far too simplistic. This is a fascinating view on the state of mental hospitals in the United States. This had much less stereotypical "horror" than I was anticipating, but I still riveted through 90% of this. Can't wait to read more of LaValle's books in the future. Which should I read next?

Mostly while I read this, I just kept asking, "Why?"Why does the narrator break out and speak to the reader directly every so often?Why doesn't anyone, including Pepper, care that there's this guy in a mental facility for no apparent reason?Why am I listening to this?Why did it take so long to get to the title of the book?(view spoiler)[Why is the woman in San Francisco really Zhou's sister? Why would that even happen?Why do we need a chapter from a rat's point of view? And why do we need to exp...

I want to take that book and club the main character to death with it!Meet Pepper, idiot par excellence. Seriously. He tried to help a neighbour whom he fancied, beat up her colleague/ex, was stopped by three undercover cops that he mistook for gangbangers, beat those up as well and - you guessed it - that didn't go so well for him. Due to a technicality, he wasn't booked, but sent to New Hyde Hospital’s psychiatric ward for a 72-hour observation period. But since he really is an idiot, his beha...

For any of you fans of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, here's an updated and fully horrorized version, complete with updated (and unfortunately real) conditions in mental health facilities, updated standard practices for lazy law enforcement, and even a supremely depressing commentary on a modern Dead Souls.I honestly think this works out just fine as a very nasty horror without adding the special patient that the inmates call the Devil. We don't even need him running around with a bull's head,...

They said this was "literary horror." They was right.

This book is good stuff. Awesome writing style, interesting premise, love the themes he's exploring, and it's always a good thing to see mental illness explored in a book that's NOT ableist!I'm new to this author and now I want to read everything he's done.I guess my only complaint is that it could have been a little shorter? Nonetheless I enjoyed it immensely and it made my commute into Manhattan much more enjoyable everyday.

I'm undecided about putting this on my horror shelf. I sometimes thought that the most frightening thing about this book/story is that it was turned into a novel. Slow moving at times almost pedantic we get this story (ending up with the rat's point of view about the whole thing...no really, rats. We're talking the actual 4 legged rodent here not some monster called "a rat".) Still we get an interesting "point" to the story. It is there. Really, just keep looking.The opening of this story and th...

This was my first Victor LaValle book and it will certainly not be my last.I found LaValle to be quite cleaver and remarkably comical. At first I thought this book was going to be a horror but even though it was at times scary, I found it to be more of a modern day thriller/mystery. This book intertwines elements of madness, friendship, and courage. A story challenging readers to consider the monster within us, the "devil" inside us all.This book was suspenseful, creative and at time bizarre. Bu...