Kin Platt's Sinbad and Me was a real spine-tingler but there's no mystery about [the protagonist of The Boy Who Could Make Himself Disappear]: he's a schizophrenic. In a combination of flashback, stream of consciousness and almost equally interior narrative, Roger reacts to his parents' abrupt divorce, to the tempo and impersonality of New York, and especially … constantly … to his inability to pronounce the letter r. As a small child he burned his tongue on a styptic pencil; thanks to a singularly monstrous set of parents, the impediment has mushroomed until the simplest conversation is agony. A few people reach him: the impetuous model in the penthouse and her boyfriend, who learned endurance in the Resistance; a girl who's crippled but not cramped; his current speech therapist, a solid, forthright, feeling woman. It is the latter who holds on when Roger withdraws into an infantile autistic state and...