The Devil in Silver

The eyes he met were white and empty. They had no pupils. Just the white meat of the eye, faint red veins running just below the surface like the chicken wire running through the shatterproof windows...Was this a hallucination? Something brought on by the pills?

Victor LaValle's new novel, "The Devil in Silver" is the perfect choice for a creepy reading the week of Halloween. While the book was marketed as a new addition to the horror genre, this is no Stephen King novel. Readers who expect it to be similar or a more typical horror story will be highly disappointed, however, if you are willing to try something new, this book is unexpectedly sweet and thrilling.

The premise of LaValle's story revolves around a tough New Yorker, Pepper, who is repeatedly referred to early on in the novel as 'the big man'. Pepper, after an altercation with a group of police officer's outside of a school building, is taken to a psychiatric unit. The staff there admit to Pepper that police officers repeatedly drop off troublesome convicts for '72 hour holds', as a way to avoid the paperwork and time it would take to book and hold them. Pepper is left there by the officers, under the assumption that after his 72 hours in the mental institution he would be let free. If that was the case, LaValle's novel would have embarrassingly short and unfulfilling. Unsurprisingly, Pepper's 72 hours comes and goes quickly, with him still locked inside the institution.

Shortly into the book, the author introduces a host of characters, some with highly identifiable signs of mental illness, others that function normally (more or less) in the institution. Inside the psychiatric unit, issues of race and class fade away, though re-surface from time to time. As the book progresses, a devil seems to haunt the mental institution, breaking into the patients' rooms in the middle of the night, causing some violent harm and frightening all the others. For those who hover on the edges of madness, it is no surprise that it is difficult to tell what's real and what's not real. While this is main suspenseful thrust of LaValle's work, the book is not all despair and fear, but also spends a lot of time focused on the relationships built between patients and the animosity that rises amongst the staff.

What is most frightening of all, is the story's description of the cruelty of the staff to patients, including heavy use of restraints and medication as a means to keep order. The novel brings up "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" on more than one occasion and appears to use the institution in that famous novel as the basis for the one described here. While many mental institutions are still struggling to ensure human and ethical treatment, many laws and procedures have been put in place to ensure the ethical treatment of our city's poorest and vulnerable populations. Mr. LaValle's novel is almost out of another place and time in it's description of the mental institution, however, to his credit, he finds new ways to explore the idea of madness from the perspective of the 'sane'.

So this Halloween, you may find yourself wondering, does Pepper get out of the institution? Does the Devil exist? What IS the difference between madness and sanity? You will need to finish 'The Devil in Silver' to find out, but I promise you will not be disappointed.

The Age of Miracles

"At the beginning, people stood on street corners and shouted about the end of the world...The freeways were clogged immediately. People heard the news, and they wanted to move. Families piled into minivans and crossed state lines. They scurried in every direction like small animals caught suddenly under a light. But, of course, there was nowhere to go."

In these few sentences, author, Karen Thompson Walker, sets the stage for a novel about a middle school girl coming of age. The book chronicles the story from pre-teen, Julia's perspective, as life resumes in the face of a global crisis. Julia throughout the book describes the uncertainty of growing up, the fear of not being able to fit in, the fear of losing friends, and the fear of never impressing the boy in math class. What makes "The Age of Miracles" different from any other coming of age story, is that Julia's is taking place while it appears that the world is coming to an end.

The book presents the demise of humanity as a 'slowing' where the world increasingly becomes more uninhabitable for its residents. First, this occurs with longer periods of day and night, changes in the tides, and the devastation to many of the worlds' migratory animals, like the birds that Julia sees fall out of the sky. Earth's population scrambles to find answers, develop a sustainable food supply, and keep order in a time where people who no longer follow 'clock time' are considered dangerous.

The book is a wonderful read. On it's face, it is a book about a girl learning about the world around her as it drastically changes. Look deeper, and the book resonates to the core of our culture. In an age where fears of global warming are increasing and more evidence points to the changes happening to Earth's climate, the youth of a not so distant tomorrow may find themselves having a similar experience to the one, Ms. Walker describes for Julia.

A Journey Between the Pages: The Beginning...

So I have avoided the 'blogger' urge for a long time, now to succumb to it (finally!) with the hope that it will not only be enjoyable to myself, but also that others get some benefit out of it. It will not be a surprise to many that know me that I am an obsessive reader. It is not unusual to find me always with a book in hand. My reading has normally been diverse and eclectic, with a mix of classics and new literature. For a long time, I have kept a journal of what I have read and the impressions I have had while reading the book. This blog is an attempt not only to share those impressions, but to suggest titles to others. I also would like to encourage people to talk about books that they have read and how they feel about them on this site. I hope to start with a few recent titles I have read, and than add from there. Happy reading!