Pepper: Victor LaValle

Pepper Dept: What begins as a 72-hour observation period for Pepper immediately turns nightmarish. He is tranquilized with a combination of Haldol and lithium, which renders him like the rest of the patients semi-comatose. Then, in the middle of his second night, he is viciously attacked in his room by a demonic beast that appears to be part man, part animal the Devil, according to The Star. This is, of course, the main point of setting a story in a mental hospital. Our idea of sanity is reconfigured as we contemplate the disconnect between the hospital staff and the patients, as we witness the oppressive nature of control, as we begin to wonder: who are the crazy ones here and the Devil in Silver , Victor LaValle s third novel, is a strange tale that takes place within the psychiatric unit of New Hyde Hospital, a public hospital in the New York City borough of Queens. Pepper is an oversized professional mover with a penchant for glam rock and an earnest streak that makes it immediately clear he is not mentally ill. However, he ends up in the psych unit at New Hyde after he mistakenly beats up a trio of cops who offload him there to save themselves the trouble of booking him at the precinct. On the third day, Pepper flattens another patient s mother during visiting hours in a rash escape attempt, extending his time on the ward indefinitely. As his stay stretches into weeks, he forms alliances with fellow patients to negotiate the tribulations of life on the unit, where the monotony and the drug regimen will scramble anyone s brains. He also leads an effort to find and destroy the Devil, who attacks Pepper again and kills another patient in the meantime. The quest to destroy the Devil therefore becomes a welcome distraction for the patients, whose sporadic behaviour begins to seem merely idiosyncratic even rational at times as they band together to take a stand. (www.immigrantscanada.com). As reported in the news.