Lots of things are broken

69. The Devil in Silver – Victor LaValle

Pepper is a casualty of overcrowding. His “choices” after he’s arrested are Rikers and the New Hyde psychiatric unit, he ends up at New Hyde because it’s more convenient…but then he stays much longer than the seventy-two hour hold.

He’s not exactly a Randall MacMurphy and he’s not actually in need of in-patient psychiatric care, either. He becomes part of a team bent on dealing with the patient behind a silver door, a patient the other patients think is the devil. A lack of proper renovation makes that so, as the “devil” can pop into the other rooms through the ceiling and attack the rest of the patients.

I expected something vastly different than what I got in this novel. I really expected to find more horror than I did, as I found it on one of those lists that pop up in October. The trope of the patient who really isn’t supposed to be in the psychiatric unit and ends up solving a mystery is one of the tropes I’ll always be interested in, and this one ended up being kind of sweet.

One thing that stood out for me, because I do think that no one stuck in a facility they can’t leave, whether it’s prison or a psychiatric ward, should not have both fiction and non-fiction book access, is the book group and the book cart – courtesy of Nurse Josephine. Everybody should read, especially if they’re stuck somewhere. It is fundamental, as they say. Pepper finds the letters of Van Gogh and is able to relate very well. Pepper’s summary of the letters made me feel sorry for Theo, mostly, but it’s very hard to support the irascible genius with mental illness and a tendency to be a real asshole.

Horace knew a lot about dealing with irascible fellow herd members. He was very calm and tolerant, a model pig.