author: Victor LaValle
name: Wayne
average rating: 3.51
book published: 2012
rating: 3
read at: 2012/10/24
date added: 2012/10/29
shelves:
review:
A long, slightly uneven book classified as horror, but probably closer to 'One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest' in it's story. The copy I read was an advanced reader's copy, so I hope some editing was still to take place before publication, both for length and for grammar and other errors.
The plot follows Pepper, a troublemaker who should be in prison, but finds himself locked in a mental hospital instead due to the whims of his arresting officers. He meets an unusual cast of characters, including a strange patient locked behind a silver door who seems to be preying on others in the unit. Is the devil in silver really there or is it the imaginings of a group of mental patients? All that sounds like the makings of a ripping horror novel, but there is also a lot of drama and interesting characters along the way, like the elderly lady who greets all the new patients on the ward and look out for them, the young girl who has been institutionalized by her mother (Lucretia from the novella 'Lucretia and The Kroons' by the same author), the Asian woman who is getting released only to be deported. These are just a few of the characters we meet.
Along the way, the plight of the institutionalized is brought up along with cash strapped institutions and workers who must serve them. None of the characters feel like stereotypes or caricatures, and you do come to care for some of them.
All of it is done in an interesting way, but weighing in at 432 pages, it just all takes so very long. It's been referred to as 'literary horror,' but with the constant asides and winks at the reader and the seeming lack of any true horror, it left me feeling like it was neither literary nor horror.
via Wayne's bookshelf: read http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/432517670?utm_medium=api&utm_source=rss
