Billy Brazil: A Novella

Matthew Holmay, a professor of English at a small Midwestern college, once believed that ``words had the power to save souls and societies.'' Now divorced, burned out and in danger of being denied tenure, he is no longer quite so sure. He finds himself intrigued by a very peculiar young man named Billy Brand, enrolled in one of his courses. Billy is intensely devoted to literature, has precocious insights and worships Holmay. However, he is also a paranoid schizophrenic who takes an unnatural interest in the professor's nine-year-old daughter Evelyn and carries a gun. This psychological thriller complexly portrays Billy's existential loneliness and yearning for interpersonal connectedness, humanizing serious mental illness without sentimentalizing it. Billy Brazil has several underdeveloped subplots and too much gratuitous dialogue, which makes for a sometimes halting narrative pace. But DeGrazia ( Enemy Country ), an English professor at Winona State University in Minnesota, handles the subjects of academic life and schizophrenia sensitively and imaginatively. ( Feb. )