I finished reading Big Machine by Victor LaValle recently. I was skeptical in the beginning — the first 100 pages — but then I started to enjoy reading it. Faith and race are the predominant themes throughout, the characters are well-written. Ricky Rice, the narrator and central character, comes from a shady past — his childhood was spent in New York City where his family was part of a cult, the Washerwoman. The mass killing that took place as the police were about to storm the building shaped Ricky’s adult life; he was a drug addict and general loser. In his 40s, he works as a janitor at bus stations until he receives a mysterious envelope containing a bus ticket to Vermont and a note.
He becomes a member of the Washburn Library as an Unlikely Scholar. His job is to scour the pages of newspapers looking for strange news; people hearing voices, seeing ghosts. Not long after he comes to the Washburn Library, he is sent out into the field to help kill an Unlikely Scholar trying to form his own group/cult/religion. Faith can create monsters. Doubt can too.
“Their main idea was pretty straightforward,” Ricky explains. “The Church is broken. Which one? Take your pick. All choices were correct. The Church, that abiding institution, had stopped working. A new church had to take its place. Something small and defiant and renewed with concern. Which is about as traditional an idea as Christianity has.”
