Ecstatic

Acclaim for Victor LaValle’s THE ECSTATIC

“[The] characters are as beautifully rendered as they are bizarrely believable…. LaValle… writes prose that hums in your ear and appeals to your intellect.” —The Washington Post Book World

“One of the funniest, darkest novels of the year. . A gracefully funny, character-driven, black comedy of manners.” —New York Post

“In the majestic tradition of William Faulkner, Victor LaValle has created, with love apparent, a singular cast of crazies, con men, and beauty queens out for their piece of the pie. This quest is a rollicking laugh-out-loud wild ride, but be warned: It is punctuated with stunning grief and mournful beauty. The Ecstatic is a jubilant American novel.” —Binnie Kirshenbaum, author of Hester Among the Ruins

“A domestic drama. . that might have been conceived by Ice Cube and Fellini.” —Time Out New York

“The characters are messy and complicated…. LaValle renders them raw and real, but with sustained doses of humor to take the edge off.” —The Washington Post

“Possessed by Kafka, Carver, and the Notorious B.I.G., this is a tale of the new millennium American experience, grotesquely captured in a prose so crisp that it cuts to the core before you can blink. LaValle exposes our absurdity — clinical and otherwise — with all its hilarity, eroticism, violence, and horrific beauty.” —Willie Perdomo, author of Where a Nickel Costs a Dime

“An auspicious first novel that ranges with obsessive-compulsive precision over the same pulpy patch of black-geek meta-culture that Colson Whitehead. . attacked with The Intuitionist. . A daring performance.” — Black Issues Book Review