Like Ben Piazza, who three years ago wrote a moving first novel about boyhood called The Exact and Very Strange Truth, Timothy Findley is an actor. Again like Piazza, he is interested in boyhood and its relationship to the adult world, and he has an actor's ear for dialogue, an actor's eye for scenes. After three years, scenes from the earlier book remain vivid in the mind; it is probable that those created by Mr. Findley [in The Last of the Crazy People] will also linger for a long time, if less happily.

The first scene sets the mood, and almost—but not quite—tells us what is to happen. It is early September, after a rainless Timothy Findley 1930– Photograph by Robert Lansdale; courtesy of Nancy Colbert & Associatessummer. An eleven-year-old boy carrying a box tiptoes out of his house in the dawn, crosses the back yard to...