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Victor LaValle has already established himself as �one of the most eloquent voices of the approaching century� (Kirkus Reviews), a writer of darkly humorous tales full of haunting beauty, astonishing leaps of imagination, and language that �crackles and hums� (Chicago Tribune). The Ecstatic is LaValle�s debut novel, a startling tale of love, horror, sex, insanity, faith, morbid obesity, and the modern American family. Something is wrong with Anthony�our 318-pound hero�and it�s getting worse. A monster has caught his uncle and his mother; now it wants Anthony. Mental illness has been transmitted through his family�s blood. The three women in his life�his mother, younger sister, and grandmother�find him naked and disoriented in his off-campus college apartment and take him home to Queens, each determined to fix him in her own peculiar way. But his presence soon turns their house into a semisuburban asylum. Sweet but wickedly sarcastic, smart and heartbreakingly vulnerable, Anthony narrates his family�s surreal adventures through a world of grinning exploitation and fake cures, from storefront evangelists and neighborhood loan sharks to bogus beauty pageants and bootleg medical clinics. He corresponds with a dreadlocked Japanese militant, is haunted by a vicious pack of dogs, and tries to make his own horror movie, all in search of an answer to a question he doesn�t dare ask. Written in the tradition of misfit picaresques from Journey to the End of the Night and Invisible Man to A Confederacy of Dunces and The World According to Garp, The Ecstatic is the revelatory story of a family trying to save themselves from a ravenous world and their own unraveling minds. (less)

Victor LaValle has already established himself as �one of the most eloquent voices of the approaching century� (Kirkus Reviews), a writer of darkly humorous tales full of haunting beauty, astonishing leaps of imagination, and language (…more)