Rating: 3 1/2 stars

Ricky Rice is a recovering junky working as a janitor in a Utica bus depot. When he receives an anonymous letter containing a cryptic note and a bus ticket to Vermont, Ricky isn’t sure what to do. After careful consideration Ricky decides to just disappear and answer the summons.

When he’s picked up by a large bear-of-a-man named Lake, and driven to a secluded area where he finds the Washburn library and individual cabins, Ricky begins to wonder what he's got himself into.

An introductory meeting is called in the library and Ricky finds himself among a group of peers made up of former drug addicts and criminals, black like him and just as confused. As the group admires black and white photographs of stylishly-dressed African Americans, they are introduced to the Dean who explains that they, like those in the photographs, are now “unlikely scholars”. As unlikely scholars, the group will comb endless newspapers looking for hidden articles of the supernatural, the existence of a god and the legacy of Judah Washburn; an escaped slave who claimed to have had contact with a higher being called “the Voice”.

I wanted to compare LaValle to writers beyond the list of usual suspects he has been linked with—Edgar Allan Poe, Haruki Murakami , John Kennedy Toole and of course Ralph Ellison. Although I can skirt the first three, simply because I’ve never read or read enough of them for comparison, but the likeness of Big Machine to Ellison’s Invisible Man was uncanny and appreciated.

Big Machine was a nice change of pace, smooth-flowing, well-written, with an interesting dose of supernatural occurrences and humor that kept things edgy, but grounded.
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Hardcover: 384 pages
Publisher: Spiegel & Grau (August 11, 2009)
ISBN-13: 978-0385527989