Review: Immediately Purchased the Author's Novel After Reading This...
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 09 27, 2012
One of the best experiences for a reader is to discover a new author. While this was not a 5 star read for me, there was so much good here, and I felt so connected to the words -- they spoke to me, no pun intended -- that I immediately and unhesitatingly purchasedThe Devil in Silver: A Novel.I believed Lucretia's world, even when it broke from reality, or *maybe* broke from reality. I believed Lucretia believed everything, and I remembered what it felt like to be a young and sensitive girl in a big, sometimes scart, city. (In my case, Detroit.) The setting of this book incorporates the best and the worst of urban life -- the wondrous and the gritty, and is seen through the eyes of a child learning that the world is a dangerous place, even for children. (Perhaps especially for children.)I think there is also something interesting to be said about perception being reality. Whether Lucretia's experiences are objectively real or not doesn't matter; all of this is *real to her,* and so it's all real to the reader.Mr. LaValle has a wonderful instinct for storytelling, and I found myself in the happy situation of the language and plot flowing so smoothly that I floated along, never noticing how far I had drifted from the shore, or -- perhaps more accurately -- how deep into the park I'd wandered with Loochie!(I'm about 6% into Devil in Silver, and enjoying it quite a bit!)