In addition, his hero is likable and his fellow patients are people you can root for. Lavalle’s writing style is likable and disarming, allowing him to perform old-fashioned gothic tricks and other tricks too (direct addresses to the reader, lengthy digressions, unexpected shifts in point of view) in an offhand manner, appearing casual, even inartful. And-if the testimony of other patients can be trusted-this other being, superhumanly strong, is equipped with horns. Just as he is beginning to adjust to the other patients and the staff, he becomes aware of “the devil”-a being who is confined behind a silver door at the other end of the ward, a being who preys on the other patients at night. Its hero is a big man called Pepper who finds himself confined to a mental institution (for observation) after becoming embroiled in a fight with three undercover policeman.
Plus, the book has a first-class “elevator pitch”: think One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest meets the Legend of Theseus and the Minotaur.
Lovecraft who wrote another book based on Lovecraft’s most racist short story ( The Ballad of Black Tom, based on “The Horror at Red Hook”) intrigued me. First of all, the idea that it was written by a young black man-well, young as far as I’m concerned, he was forty when he wrote it-a fan of H.P. I was looking forward to this horror novel, and-as often happens when I look forward to something-I was disappointed.
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