Anything Is Good

Two Bronx boys take radically different paths in a novel about the limits of genius and the loss of home, by a “terrifically gifted” author (Anita Shreve, New York Times-bestselling author of The Stars Are Fire).

Ralph Silverman was a childhood buddy, a foreign film buff, a victim of bullies, a boy genius. He held long conversations with his pet parakeet and spent countless hours on a computer, creating mesmerizing music and solving problems in philosophy. He was a friend of great scholars...