The devil in silver A novel

Review by New York Times Review

VICTOR LAVALLE'S publishers have made the curious decision to market his third novel, "The Devil in Silver," as a horror thriller. But it doesn't really fit either part of that label; it isn't much interested in making your pulse race, and it won't scare the pants off anyone. It's simply too bighearted, too gentle, too kind, too culturally observant and too idiosyncratic to squash into the small cupboard of any one genre, or even two. LaValle leads his readers to the New Hyde mental hospital, a shabby urban Bedlam in Queens, shoves them in and locks the door behind them for 400 pages. For company we have Pepper - a big, lonely loser with all the impulse control of your average preschooler - and the other inmates, a drugged-out collection of the unwell, unloved and unwanted: poor people with emotional problems that no one wants to think about, let alone treat. There's also a geriatric Minotaur locked behind a silver door, a beast the patients believe might be Old Harry himself. But when it comes to creating suffering, the Devil can't begin to compete with a nonfunctioning mental health care system, too underfunded and unaccountable to do anyone any good. LaValle explores the way New Hyde's patients are routinely doped up, locked down and abused (by one another and the staff), all while refusing to demonize any one cog in a machine that grinds up anyone unlucky enough to be fed into it. Doing well by these people isn't in the larger social interest. In times of austerity, the last thing anyone wants to do is throw a bunch of money at an agency that can't offer a return on the taxpayer's investment. Or, as Pepper's doctor puts it: "A wise man once said that every system is designed to give you the results you actually get. . . . This system is working." "For some people," Pepper retorts. "Wrong," the doctor tells him. "The system is working exactly right for those it was intended for. That's why it hasn't been fixed. Because it isn't broken!" Like police departments, schools and a variety of other government services, New Hyde has the misfortune - an unforgivable one, in today's society - of not being designed to produce a profit. Call it the original American sin. Indeed, LaValle's fellowship of the mistreated and the mentally ill is only a stand-in for a much larger slice of inconvenient America. "Maybe this is the world," one old tenant of New Hyde bluntly says. "If you think about it, what's so different? Wake up in the morning, eat some breakfast, take a few pills to start the day. Go to a conference room and waste time. Go to lunch, take a few more pills. . . . Eat dinner while you watch TV. Take a few more pills and go to bed. Isn't that how most people are living? It's been a while since I was outside, but that's what the news is always saying. Maybe out there is a lot like in here." So what about the monster behind the silver door? For Pepper and his makeshift family of the mad, getting even with the demon comes to seem more important than their own recovery or their possible return to the world beyond New Hyde. It is, LaValle suggests, easier to live an unhappy life when you have a handy demon upon which to focus your despair and rage; easier than trying to wrestle with the conditions that led to that unhappy life in the first place. In this regard, everyone loves the Devil. Joe Hill is the author of the story collection "20th Century Ghosts" and the novels "Horns" and "Heart-Shaped Box."

Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [October 7, 2012]

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Review by Booklist Review

Bound to be compared to Ken Kesey's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Lavalle's fourth novel takes place at New Hyde Mental Hospital, where a pugnacious man called Pepper is forcibly committed. Once inside, Pepper, like McMurphy in Kesey's story, stirs up trouble by pushing back against the neglectful and often abusive nurse in charge and her staff, for which he's punished. One of the patients explains that New Hyde is for the Chronics the incurable and the involuntary, and Pepper's temper rises with the injustice of his situation, for which he's punished. Then Pepper hears about and is attacked by a monster, a cruel beast with unnatural strength that has killed several patients. The remarkably sane inmates, led by Pepper, outwit the staff and hunt the Devil down in a grand finale of mythic proportion. More than a scary horror novel, this multileveled story challenges readers to consider the nature of madness, basic human rights, and the beast within us all.--Baker, Jen Copyright 2010 Booklist

From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.

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Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

Reviewed by Benjamin Percy. New Hyde hospital-a cash-strapped mental institution in Queens-is the setting of Victor LaValle's excellent third novel. Think One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest meets Dante's Inferno. LaValle anticipates the inevitable comparison to Kesey and tips his hat early on, when a patient says that though Kesey's novel takes place in a mental hospital, "it isn't about mentally ill people." In the same manner, LaValle makes it unclear who is crazy and who isn't; the overlapping realities of the doctors, nurses, and patients really aren't so different. The omniscient narrator chases many perspectives through the fluorescent-lit corridors of New Hyde-even a rat's-but the central character is Pepper, a big-shouldered, working-class troublemaker who ends up institutionalized simply because it means less paperwork for the police. Pepper is led to believe he will face a judge after 72 hours, but bad luck and bad decisions keep him at New Hyde-always medicated, sometimes restrained to his bed so long the small of his back "stopped feeling like a curled fist a day ago and now was just a pocket of cold fire burning through his waist." And you never want to end up restrained at New Hyde. Because the Devil is on the prowl. He is housed-or so the patients believe-behind a silver door at the end of an empty hallway. At night he visits his neighbors. His heels clop "like horseshoes on cobblestones." He has the body of a frail old man, but the head of a bison, with a "deep, wet pit" of a mouth and "dead white eyes." Pepper's roommate-a malt ball-headed man named Coffee who spends most of his time trying to phone the president-believes, "The food makes us fat. The drugs make us slow. We're cattle. Food. For it." The novel is genuinely unsettling-as the devil lowers himself from the ceiling, as the doctors and nurses abuse the patients, as a woman commits suicide by swallowing a bed sheet so deeply that its tip is stained yellow with bile-but it is also very funny. LaValle has a wicked sense of humor, and the gags often come as a relief, such as when an institutionalized teenage girl in baby-blue Nikes takes down a big man with her "crazy strength" or a monstrous rat crashes through a ceiling tile, snatches a box of Cocoa Puffs, and scampers through a gauntlet of nurses stomping their feet and swinging brooms. In a novel suffused with the tragic and sinister, humor is necessary, modulating emotion, keeping us off guard. But on occasion, LaValle gets too silly and cute. The hospital administration, always cutting corners, repurposes the building "like a motherfucker." And as Pepper sneaks his lover into his room, the narrator says, "ladies and gentlemen, despite the perceived differences between them and you, the mentally ill like jooking, too!" Moments like these make the tone feel unstable, and the moments of genuine terror harder to take seriously.But these are small gripes. The novel, expertly written, will leave you wondering about its many memorable characters and lingering over questions about fear, horror, madness, suffering, friendship, and love. Benjamin Percy is the author of the novels Red Moon (forthcoming from Grand Central) and The Wilding, as well as two books of short stories. His honors include the Whiting Writers' Award, and inclusion in Best American Short Stories and Best American Comics. (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

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Review by Library Journal Review

Ken Kesey's One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest meets Stephen King's It in this page-turner by LaValle (Big Machine). When his latest brawl involves undercover police, big Pepper is committed for a 72-hour evaluation at a Queens mental health facility called Northwest. But the combination of Pepper's bad temper, Northwest's corrupt, overworked staffers, surprises unleashed by the other residents, and overwhelming meds soon has that stay looking permanent. Pepper is drawn into a plot with an unlikely team of the facility's oldest resident, a deceptively tough African American girl, and a man who obsessively works the pay phone bank to stop the havoc wreaked by a secreted resident of an off-limits wing, a killer whom some say is the Devil. Verdict LaValle skillfully mixes an indictment of the mental health system, eccentric and diverse character studies, and horror thrills in a freewheeling novel that is only occasionally marred by twitchy shifts in point of view. This Devil is one hell of a good time: exciting, insightful, tragic, and hopeful in equal proportion.-Neil Hollands, Williamsburg Regional Lib., VA (c) Copyright 2012. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

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Review by Kirkus Book Review

A diffuse novel reminiscent of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest--but then, what novel set in a mental ward does not remind one of Randle McMurphy and Company? Pepper is a huge man who gets put in New Hyde Hospital in Queens for assaulting three undercover police officers he's dubbed Huey, Dewey and Louie. Although he was originally supposed to stay no more than 72 hours, Pepper winds up getting put on a potent collection of psycho-sedative drugs and "wakes up" almost a month later, wondering what he's doing there. The ward has the usual collection of oddities, misfits and eccentrics, and Pepper fairly quickly adapts to his new situation, perhaps a sign that life outside the walls is close to indistinguishable from life within. One new wrinkle in this relatively predictable scheme of things is that the devil--yes, Satan himself--seems to occasionally run loose at night, wreaking havoc on some of the inmates. Meanwhile, Pepper starts to adjust to life on the inside, attending book-group sessions, where he becomes enamored with the letters of Vincent van Gogh, and experiencing the irrational vagaries of his fellow inmates. He also begins a sexual relationship with Sue (or Xiu), who's scheduled to be deported to China in a week, so Pepper takes upon himself the task of rescuing her from this fate. Seeing himself as a savior allows Dr. Anand, the head psychiatrist, the luxury of diagnosing Pepper as having Narcissistic Personality Disorder--and you know things have gotten out of hand when a psychiatrist tells a group of inmates, "You are terrible people...Sometimes I want to kill you." A story whose idea is much more engaging than the reading experience itself.]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

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1 They brought the big man in on a winter night when the moon looked as hazy as the heart of an ice cube. It took three cops to wrestle and handcuff him. They threw him in their undercover cruiser and drove him to the New Hyde mental hospital. This was a mistake. They shouldn't have brought him there. But that wasn't going to save him. When they reached the hospital, everyone got out. The big man refused to walk. The three cops mobbed around him, trying to intimidate, but to the big man they just looked like Donald Duck's nephews: Huey, Dewey, and Louie. A bunch of cartoons. It didn't help that they were dressed in street clothes instead of blue uniforms. Dewey and Louie walked behind the big man and Huey stayed up front. The big man's hands were cuffed behind his back. Dewey and Louie pushed him like tugboats guiding a barge, one good shove and he floated toward the double doors of the building. The lobby was so empty, so quiet, that their footsteps echoed. New Hyde looked like a low-rent motel. Bland floral-print cushions on the couches and chairs, the walls a lackluster lavender. There were no patients waiting around, no staff members on hand, not even an information desk. But Huey, the lead cop, knew where he was going. The big man frowned at the décor and the empty seats. He'd thought they were taking him to a lockup. What the hell kind of place was this? He got so confused, his feet stopped moving, so Dewey and Louie gave him another shove. They reached the far end of the lobby and found a hallway. The cops turned right but the big man went left. It might've looked like an escape attempt except that the big man stopped himself after two paces. So confused he actually turned back to look for them. Huey, Dewey, and Louie were watching him now, to see what he would do. They were relaxed because they knew he could do nothing. Huey raised his right hand. He wore a chunky silver diver's watch that looked expensive even under the hospital's terrible fluorescent lights. He beckoned and the big man stepped closer to them. It was quiet enough that the cops could hear him lick his dry lips. Now this guy was big but let's put it in perspective. He wasn't Greek mythology-sized; wasn't tossing boulders at passing ships. He wasn't even Green Mile-sized; one of those human-giant types. He stood six foot three and weighed two hundred seventy-one pounds, and if that doesn't sound big to you, then you must be a professional wrestler. The dude was big but still recognizably human. Beatable. Three smaller men, like these cops, could take him down together. Just to get that straight. The big man returned to his captors, without a word, and once again they all moved in the same direction. The hallway was clear and empty, just lavender walls boxing in a thin runway of industrial carpet. But the big man could see that the runway ended at a big old door, heavy like you'd find on a bank vault. Unmovable. This was no Motel Six. His footsteps faltered. But this time the cops weren't going to let him wander off. Dewey yanked that big boy backward, by the handcuffs. His shoulders popped in their sockets and his face went hot with pain. "Now he's scared," the lead cop said. They reached the door. A small white button sat in the wall. Huey pressed it and kept his finger on the button. The buzzer played on the other side of the door and sounded like a duck's quack, as if Huey was throwing his cartoon voice. The secure door featured a window the size of a cereal box. With his finger still steady on the buzzer, Huey peeked through it. "Just break the glass," Dewey said. He seemed to be joking, but he hadn't smiled. Huey clonked the sturdy silver face of his diver's watch against the window. "You couldn't shatter this shit with a bullet." The big man opened his mouth. He had plans to speak but found no words. He couldn't stop staring at that door. Not wood, not faux wood, fucking iron. Maybe. The damn thing had rivets in it, like it had been torn off a battleship. Bombproof; fireproof; probably airtight, too. He finally found the words. "This place is locked up tighter than your Uncle Scrooge's vault." Huey turned away from the door. His eyes brightened with joyful cruelty. "You think these jokes are going to save you, but they're only making things worse." Louie said, "He's just trying to get one of us to hit him. So he'll have a lawsuit." Dewey said, "We didn't hit him before, why would we start now?" Huey said, "You're applying logic to a man who's not thinking logically." "What the hell does that mean?" the big man asked. "We think you might be a danger to yourself because of your mental condition," Louie added sarcastically. The big man's body went rigid. "What mental condition?" Dewey said, "You attacked three officers of the law." "How was I supposed to know you were cops?!" To be fair, the big man had a point. The three men wore plain clothes. Their shields, hanging around their necks on silver chains, were tucked under their different colored sweatshirts. But who cared? Here was one rule you could count on: You were never allowed to punch a cop. So forget about punching two of them, repeatedly, and trying hard to connect with the third. It didn't matter if they were in uniform, wearing plain clothes, or rocking a pair of pajamas. But before he could get into a debate about the finer points of an entrapment defense, an eye appeared on the other side of the unbreakable window. Well, a head at least, with a mess of grayish white hair, but the only part they could make out clearly was that eye. The outer ring of the pupil was blue but closer to the iris the color turned a light gray. Cataracts. The other eye was shut because the person squinted. Man or woman? Hard to say, the face was smooshed so tight against the pane. The clouded pupil swam left then right, as alien as a single-cell organism caught under the objective lens of a microscope. It surveyed the big man, and the three cops. It blinked. The big man frowned at the person in the window. Dewey and Louie unconsciously stepped backward. Only Huey, still pressing the white button, didn't seem startled by the watchful eye. He smiled at the big man, more broadly than he had all night. Relishing what he would say next: "Welcome to New Hyde." He pointed to a plaque embedded in the wall right above the door: NEW HYDE HOSPITAL. FOUNDED IN 1953. Dewey said, "When can we leave?" Just then the eye seemed to slip away from the window and another face replaced it. This new person stood farther from the glass so they could make out more of him. A man. Brown-skinned. With puffy cheeks, a soft chin, and a nose as round as an old lightbulb. He wore glasses. A bushy mustache. And a scowl. They could see his chest, the tie and jacket he wore. An ID card, sheathed in plastic, hung around his neck on a plastic cord. The big man said, "He wears his ID on the outside, see? That's how people know what his job is." The three cops sighed with exhaustion. Nine-twenty at night and all three were tired. They just had to hand the big man off and file their reports, then each could finally go home. (To their mother, Della Duck?) The brown man looked out at Huey, and his gaze followed the cop's arm down as far as it could go, toward that finger, still mashing the white buzzer. The brown man then stared up at Huey again and brought one finger to his lips in a shushing motion. Huey pulled his hand away so quickly, you would've thought the buzzer had just burnt him. The bolt lock in the door turned, clacking like the opening of a manual cash register's drawer. Then the door opened with surprising ease for its apparent weight. The doorway exhaled a stale, musty smell. They could now see the brown man fully. His big round face fused right onto his round body. Imagine a wine cask, upright, wearing glasses. Not tall and not fat, just one solid oval. And yet he must be someone with authority, if he had the keys to open this mighty door. Which was good enough for the big man, who said, "I'm innocent." The brown man looked up at the big man. "I'm not a judge," he said. "I'm a doctor." The doctor narrowed his eyes at Huey, who suddenly seemed bashful. The doctor said, "I didn't expect to be seeing you again." Huey nodded, looking away from the doctor. But then he seemed to feel the gaze of his partners, and he snapped out of his shame. "This is legit. He jumped two of my guys." The big man appealed to the doctor. "I thought they were meatheads, not cops." The doctor looked at the two cops on either side of the big man. He smiled, which made his bushy mustache rise slightly like a caterpillar on the move. He stepped aside and invited them in. "My team is waiting down the hall," he said, locking the door behind them. "Second room." The cops led the big man forward. Dewey and Louie holding his arms tighter than before. They didn't like the meathead line. Huey, with the watch, rested one hand on the big man's shoulder and together the quartet followed the doctor. The room looked like nearly any medium-sized conference room you'll ever find. The walls were an eggshell white, a dry-erase board hung on one of them with the faintest red squiggles half erased in an upper corner. A pull-down screen hung on another wall. In the middle of the room sat a faux-wood table, large enough to seat fifteen, but ringed by only fourteen faux-wood chairs with plastic padded backs. Another ring of cheaper, foldout chairs was placed against the walls. The working class of meeting spaces. All the people already in the room looked as tired as the decor. Tonight the full intake team was in attendance: a social worker, an activity therapist, a registered nurse, three trainees, an orderly, a psychologist, and a psychiatrist (that was the brown man). These poor folks had been ready to leave at the end of their shift, but then the cops called ahead and said they were bringing in a new admission, so the doctor demanded that everyone stay. The team had been waiting on the big man for two hours. This was not a cheerful group. Ten people, plus three cops, plus the big man. It would be a crowded, grumpy room. Before the guest of honor arrived, the men and women on staff had sat at the table with notepads and files spread out in front of them, doing busywork for other patients while they waited. Some used cell phones to make notes, or to text, or answer email. The orderly, at the far end of the table, watched a YouTube video on his phone and sagged in his chair. When the cops brought the big man into the conference room, the staff members leaned backward, as if a strong wind had just burst in. The doctor pointed to a faux-wood chair that had been pulled back from the table about three feet. "He can sit there." Huey brought the big man to the chair and unlocked his handcuffs. He then took the big man's right wrist and handcuffed it to the arm of his chair. The staff watched quietly and without surprise. Only the orderly looked away from the scene, replaying the video on his phone. Once the big man settled, the doctor walked to the open door of the conference room. Somewhere outside the room, farther down the hall, deeper into the unit, buzzing voices could be heard. A television playing too loudly. The doctor pushed the door shut, and the room became so quiet that everyone in it could hear, very faintly, the bump-bump-bump coming from the orderly's cell phone. The tinny thump of music playing over small speakers. The doctor walked the length of the room and chucked the orderly on the shoulder as he passed to collect a folding chair for himself. He set his plastic chair in front of the big man and sat down. He smiled and the bushy mustache rose. "I'm Dr. Anand," he said. "And I want to welcome you to New Hyde Hospital. This building, this unit, is called Northwest." The big man looked at the other staff members. A few of them managed a New York smile, which is to say a tight-lipped half-frown. The others watched him dispassionately. Dr. Anand--like the big man, like most of the people in this room--had been raised in Queens, New York. The most ethnically diverse region not just in the United States, but on the entire planet; a distinction it's held for more than four decades. In Queens, you will find Korean kids who sound like black kids. Italians who sound like Puerto Ricans. Puerto Ricans who sound like Italians. Third-generation Irish who sound like old Jews. That's Queens. Not a melting pot, not even a tossed salad, but an all-you-can-eat, mix-and-match buffet. Dr. Anand was no stranger to the buffet table, a man of Indian descent who sounded a little like a working-class guy from an Irish neighborhood. He dropped those r's when he wasn't being careful. He sounded like he was talking through his nose, not nasal but surprisingly high-pitched. The big man wasn't concerned with ethnography just then. He hadn't said anything since crossing the threshold of the big doorway. That's because he wasn't actually there. Only his body filled his chair. The rest of him lagged a little behind. It was still back in the lobby. The big man knew he should be listening to this doctor. If anyone could explain how soon he'd be released, it must be the barrel-chested Indian dude squatting on the dinky chair right in front of him. But he just couldn't do it. His ears felt stuffed up and his mind fuzzy. He wanted to turn and look over his shoulder, try to find that lagging part of him that would make sense of this moment. He didn't actually move, for fear the cops might pummel him. "So why do you think you're here?" Dr. Anand asked. The whole room waited for his answer. Except for the orderly, who pulled out his cell phone again, muted the device, and tilted his head down toward the screen. He wore the glazed-eyed grin of a man watching something that showed skin. Excerpted from The Devil in Silver by Victor LaValle All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.

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