Not As Crazy As I Seem

April 7, 2003
Devon Brown has what his mother discreetly calls "tendencies": he eats his food in combinations of four, buttons every shirt completely before hanging it in the closet and can't stand knowing that there's a crooked poster in the biology classroom. At a new private school in a new town, he tries his best to stay inconspicuous and resists the efforts of his new shrink (who eventually diagnoses obsessive-compulsive disorder). Devon's first-person narration, especially his descriptions of sessions with his therapist, gives readers a strong sense of what it's like to live with OCD (he knows his behavior "doesn't make sense if you think about it for very long"). Harrar's (First Tiger) plotting, however, is less realistic. Devon accompanies a troubled classmate, Ben, to school after hours: while Ben spray-paints the word "Nazi" everywhere, Devon can't resist the opportunity to straighten that biology poster. The narrator is spotted and blamed, and not even his parents believe him when he says he is innocent and refuses to name the real perpetrator. Realizing that his compulsions have landed him and his parents in serious trouble, Devon throws himself into conquering his problems and in short order reveals their origins in a childhood trauma. Unfortunately, Ben's vandalism reads like a device to inspire the protagonist's self-examination, and the wholly optimistic ending comes off as scripted, too. While Devon emerges as intriguing and likable, the convincing profile does not quite cohere into a full-bodied novel. Ages 11-up.