Lida loaned this to me. It's about this nice Jewish boy, Bert, who's older brother, Philip, is schizophrenic. Philip has his first real break with reality when Bert is 16, Philip comes back from college to stay at his parents house. The strain of living with him wears heavily on everyone else particularly Bert, who shares a room with him. The novel follows Bert through the next ten years (more or less) as he finishes high school, leaves for Princeton, graduates, finds a job in the Sewers department, goes to graduate school at Columbia for his MBA, graduates, and gets a real job. Bert tries to work out the kinks of his sexual personae (he's gay but sometimes attracted to women) deal with space aliens that only he, some kids, substance abusers, and crazy people can see, contend with the shrill, screaming, Jane Alley who yells into the airshaft each night, and wonder if he isn't crazy himself. There are lots of interesting x and wonder if aliens, Ribsy, has a bad substance abuse problem, as does Philip and Patrick, Bert's first male lover. Reading it you keep wondering how much is based on reality: does the author have a schizophrenic brother who wrote the poems, who is the famous writer based on (Elie Wiesel is my guess) that kind of thing. I liked a great deal about the book, but didn't enjoy it as much as I might have done, just because it was so random. I don't mind invisible space visitors who trail green slime and wear Norma Kamali, I encourage that, but there are four years when Bert is at college that we know almost nothing about. I want the Is dotted and the Ts crossed. I want all the details.