Crazy
Sassy humor and gentle nostalgia is the surprisingly effective combination employed by Blatty, master of the horror genre and the author of The Exorcist, in this fond look back at 1940s- era New York. As 80-year-old Joey El Bueno begins his memoirs while a patient at Bellevue Hospital, he introduces his adolescent alter ego, a wisecracking Peruvian-Irish kid with an affinity for driving the staff at St. Stephen’s Grammar School batty. But the nuns aren’t the only ones going a little crazy; you see, lately Joey has struck up a friendship with a girl no one else seems to have seen or heard of, and Joey himself seems to know about things before they have happened. As readers attempt to puzzle out whether Joey has a fractured psyche or has broken through the time-space continuum, they will be treated to an entertaining romp through the Lower East Side conducted by an inimitable tour guide. --Margaret Flanagan