{"product_id":"big-machine-isbn-9780385527996","title":"Big Machine","description":"\u003cb\u003eA “haunting and fresh” (\u003ci\u003eLos Angeles Times\u003c\/i\u003e) novel about doubt, faith, and the monsters we carry within us that “[draws] comparisons to the work of Ralph Ellison and Thomas Pynchon” (\u003ci\u003eThe Wall Street Journal\u003c\/i\u003e)\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e“\u003ci\u003eBig Machine \u003c\/i\u003eis 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\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003e \u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: \u003ci\u003eLos Angeles Times, The Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, Publishers Weekly\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eRicky 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. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eInfused with the wonder of a disquieting dream and laced with Victor LaValle’s fiendish comic sensibility, \u003ci\u003eBig Machine\u003c\/i\u003e is a mind-rattling mystery about doubt, faith, and the monsters we carry within us.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eWinner of the American Book Award and the Shirley Jackson Award\u003c\/b\u003e“LaValle is as much wry fabulist as he is dogged allegorist, and his flights of grim fancy are tethered by acute observations. He can be awfully funny, too. [His]devilish fable renders the visible world—of science, social hierarchies, and \u003ci\u003eNew York Times\u003c\/i\u003e headlines–a load of cultish hooey.”\u003cb\u003e—\u003ci\u003eBookforum\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Beautiful.”\u003cb\u003e—\u003ci\u003eVanity Fair\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“If Hieronymus Bosch and Lenny Bruce got knocked up by a woman with a large and compassionate heart, they might have brought forth \u003ci\u003eBig Machine\u003c\/i\u003e. But it is Victor LaValle’s peculiar, poetic, rough and funny voice that brings it to us, alive and kicking and irresistible.”\u003cb\u003e—Amy Bloom, author of the \u003ci\u003eNew York Times\u003c\/i\u003e bestseller\u003ci\u003e Away\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003e“Big Machine\u003c\/i\u003e is like nothing I’ve ever read, incredibly human and alien at the same time. LaValle writes like Gabriel Garcia Marquez mixed with Edgar Allen Poe, but this is even more than that. He’s written the first great book of the next America.”\u003cb\u003e—Mos Def\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“If the literary Gods mixed together Haruki Murakami and Ralph Ellison, and threw in several fistfuls of 21st century attitude, the result would be Victor LaValle. \u003ci\u003eBig Machine\u003c\/i\u003e is a wonderful, original, and crazy novel.”\u003cb\u003e—Anthony Doerr, author of \u003ci\u003eThe Shell Collector\u003c\/i\u003e and\u003ci\u003e About Grace\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Victor LaValle is one of the finest writers around—puzzling but never abstruse, compassionate but never pitying. With\u003ci\u003e The Ecstatic\u003c\/i\u003e, he produced one of my favorite novels of the decade, and now, \u003ci\u003ewith Big Machine\u003c\/i\u003e, he has produced another: a pristine window into a flawed human soul, but also a daring fantasy through which America and all its troubles come sliding gradually into focus.”\u003cb\u003e—Kevin Brockmeier, author of\u003ci\u003e A Brief History of the Dead\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Fractures all of our notions of how well-made fiction ought to behave . . . idea-hungry and haywire, too alive and abrasive to be missed.  The multicultural novel has come of age—smashingly.”\u003cb\u003e—\u003ci\u003eKirkus Review,\u003c\/i\u003e starred review\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Sure to up his critical standing while furthering comparisons to Haruki Murakami, John Kennedy Toole and Edgar Allan Poe. Ricky’s intoxicating voice—robust, organic, wily—is perfect for narrating LaValle’s high-stakes mashup of thrilling paranormal and Ralph Ellison’s \u003ci\u003eInvisible Man\u003c\/i\u003e, as the fateful porter—something of a modern Odysseus rallied by a team of ‘spiritual X-men’—wanders through America’s ‘messianic hoo-hah.’”\u003cb\u003e—\u003ci\u003ePublishers Weekly\u003c\/i\u003e, starred review\u003c\/b\u003eVictor LaValle  is the author of the short-story collection \u003ci\u003eSlapboxing with Jesus \u003c\/i\u003eand the novel \u003ci\u003eThe Ecstatic\u003c\/i\u003e, a finalist for the PEN\/Faulkner Award.\u003ci\u003e\u003cb\u003eChapter One\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Don’t look for dignity in public bathrooms. The most you’ll find is  privacy and sticky floors. But when my boss gave me the glossy envelope, the bathroom  was the first place I ran. What can I say? Lurking in toilets was my job.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e I was  a janitor at Union Station in Utica, New York. Specifically contracted through Trailways  to keep their little ticket booth and nearby bathroom clean. I’d done the same job  in other upstate towns, places so small their whole bus stations could’ve fit inside  Union Station’s marbled hall. A year in Kingston, six months in Elmira. Then Troy.  Quit one and find the next. Sometimes I told them I was leaving, other times I just  disappeared.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e When I got the envelope, I went to the bathroom and shut the door.  I couldn’t lock it from the inside so I did the next best thing and pulled my cleaning  cart in front of the door to block the way. My boss was a woman, but if the floors  in front of the Trailways booth weren’t shining she’d launch into the men’s room  with a fury. She had hopes for a promotion.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e But even with the cart in the way I  felt exposed. I went into the third stall, the last stall, so I could have my peace.  Soon as I opened the door, though, I shut it again. Good God. Me and my eyes agreed  that the second stall would be better. I don’t know what to say about the hygiene  of the male species. I can understand how a person misses the hole when he’s standing,  but how does he miss the hole while sitting down? My goodness, my goodness. So, it  was decided, I entered stall number two.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e The front of the envelope had my name,  written by hand, and nothing else. No return address in the corner or on the back,  and no mailing address. My boss just said the creamy yellow envelope had been sitting  on her desk when she came in that morning. Propped against the green clay pen holder  her son made in art class.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e I held the envelope up to the fluorescent ceiling lights  and saw two different papers inside. One a long rectangle and the other a small square.  I tapped the envelope against my palm, then tore the top half slowly. I blew into  the open envelope, turned it upside down, and dropped both pieces of paper into my  hand.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “Ricky Rice!”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e I heard my name and a slap against the bathroom door. Hit hard  enough that the push broom fell right off my cleaning cart and clacked against the  tile floor. You would’ve thought a grenade had gone off from the way I jumped. The  little sheets of paper slipped from my palm and floated to that sticky toilet floor.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “Aw, Cheryl!” I shouted.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “Don’t give me that,” she yelled back.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e I walked out the  stall to my cleaning cart. Lifted the broom and pulled the cart aside. Didn’t even  have time to open the door for Cheryl, she just pushed at it any damn way. I flicked  the ceiling lights off, like a kid who thinks the darkness will hide him.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e I’m going  to tell you something nice about my boss, Cheryl McGee. She could be sweet as baby’ s feet as long as she didn’t think you were taking advantage. When I first moved  to Utica, she and her son even took me out for Chicken Riggies. It was a date, but  I pretended I didn’t know. The stink of failure had followed my relationships for  years, and I preferred keeping this job to trying for love again.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Now she stood  at the bathroom door, trying to peek around me. A slim little redhead who’d grown  her hair down to her waist and wore open-toed sandals in all but the worst of winter.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “Someone’s in there?” she asked, looked up at the darkened lights.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “Me,” I said.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e She pointed her chin down, but her eyes up at me. She thought she looked like a  mastermind, dominating with her glare, but I’d been shot at before. Once, I was thrown  down a flight of stairs.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “I mean, is there anyone in there that I can’t fire?”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Oop. I lifted the broom and shook it.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “I was just sweeping,” I said.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Cheryl nodded  and stepped back two paces.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “I don’t mind breaks, Ricky, you know that.” She took  out her cell phone and flipped it open, looked at the face. “But I need this station  looking crisp first thing in the morning.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “I’ll be done in a minute,” I said.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Cheryl nodded, reached back, and swept her hand through her waist-length hair. The  gesture didn’t look like flirtation, just hard work.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “Hey! What did that letter  say?”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e I looked back into the bathroom. “Don’t know yet.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e She nodded and squeezed  her lips together. “Well, I’d love to know,” she said, and smiled weakly.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “Me too,”  I told her, not unkindly.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Then, of all things, she gave me a limp salute with her  right hand. After that she turned in her puffy gray boots and walked toward the ticket  booth.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e The bathroom’s windows were a row of small frosted glass rectangles right  near the ceiling. They let in light, but turned it green and murky. Now, as I crept  back to the second toilet stall, I imagined I was walking underwater, and felt queasy.  I opened the door to find the first piece of paper right where I’d dropped it. And  I recognized it immediately.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e A bus ticket.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e I bent at the knees and braced one hand  against the stall wall for balance. My right leg ached something awful. I even let  out an old man’s groan as I crouched, but that kind of ache was nothing new. I’d  felt forty ever since I was fifteen.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e I held the ticket at an angle so I could read  it in the hazy light.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e One way, from Union Station to Burlington, Vermont.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e An eleven-  or twelve-hour trip if you figured all the station stops between here and there.  The date on the ticket read Thursday, the twenty-first of January, just three days  off. The name of the company on the top was Greyhound. I worked for Trailways. It  sounds silly, but the logo made the ticket feel like contraband. I leaned back, out  of the stall, and peeked at the bathroom door to make sure I was still alone.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e I  checked the back of the ticket for something, a note, an explanation. Nothing. Then  I remembered that I’d seen two silhouettes through the envelope.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e I ducked my head  to the left, looking to the floor of the sanitary first stall, but it hadn’t landed  there. Then I looked to my right and saw that little cream-colored sheet, not much  bigger than a Post-it, flat on the floor of filthy old stall number three.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Let me  be more precise.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Flat on the floor, in a gray puddle, in filthy old stall number  three.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Forget it.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Better to leave it behind than dip fingers in the muck on that  floor. Even wearing gloves didn’t seem like enough protection. Maybe a hazmat suit.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Leave it there. Make peace with a little mystery.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e I stood and rubbed my bad knee,  even turned to leave, but you know that old saying about curiosity: curiosity is  a bastard.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e I opened the door of stall number three and tried not to look at the  bowl itself, or at all that had smeared and splashed along the seat and the back  wall. I opened my mouth to breathe, but the faint whiff of filth, like a corrupted  soul, haunted me. It made my eyes tear up. Even my ears seemed to ring. I bet I looked  like a nerve gas victim.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e So I used the toe of my boot to tug the sheet of paper  toward me, but it wouldn’t move. I had to use my hand.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e I lurched my middle finger  forward, even as I pulled my head back, and touched the corner of the soaked little  sheet. I flicked at it and flicked at it, but the damned thing barely shifted. I  had no choice.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e I picked the paper up, right out of the muck. The gray liquid didn’ t even run down my fingers, it just clung, like jelly, to the tips. It was cold and  lumpy. My skin went numb. The wet paper lay flat in my palm; I peeled it off with  my left hand, then held it to the greenish light of the windows.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “Ricky Rice!”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “Aw, Cheryl!” I shouted.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “Enough of that! You get out here!”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e I would, but not yet.  I stepped out of the stall and rose onto my toes, getting the soaked sheet as close  to the windows as possible. I could see black ink on the paper. Make out the same  handwriting that had scribbled my name on the outside of that envelope.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “I mean  it, Ricky.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Cheryl pushed and strained at the door, and the wheels of my cleaning  cart squeaked as they rolled. I blew on the paper to dry it. The cursive was small,  but neat, legible.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e The wooden door swung open. I heard its steel handle clang against  the stone wall.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e I paid no more attention to Cheryl because now I could read the  two lines of the note:\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e You made a promise in Cedar Rapids in 2002.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Time to honor  it.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Without thinking, purely automatic, I walked back into that filthy toilet stall  and flushed the note away.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e But not the ticket.A Publishers Weekly top 10 book of the year","brand":"One World","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46302174478565,"sku":"NP9780385527996","price":12.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9780385527996.jpg?v=1767722599","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/products\/big-machine-isbn-9780385527996","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}