IT'S OKAY TO LIE If Your Fingers Are Crossed

IT'S OKAY TO LIE IF YOUR FINGERS ARE CROSSED TIME: August, 1950. PLACE: A suburb north of Fenway Park This title, "It's Okay to Lie if Your Fingers are Crossed," is based on a ritual kids perpetrated in the forties and fifties, which exempted them from the LIAR label, providing they crossed their fingers behind them, unbeknownst to the person or persons to whom they were lying. The hero of the story is eleven year-old Billy Flynn, a schooled and consummate liar, who lives in a suburb north of Fenway Park. With the ironic bite of his sense of humor, his unusual way of surviving and seeing through the pretensions of the adult world around him, Billy Flynn could very well remind one of an eleven-year-old Holden Caulfield, minus the rich parents and sympathetic sister. But this boy is a working class kid (third generation Irish-American) who would never see the inside of a prep school. Billy's goals are relatively simple: He wants to "hear" the Lone Ranger unmasked on radio, get a paper route, play center-field in Little League and obtain reliable information about sex (not necessarily in that order) but His means of attaining these goals are beyond-the-pale. There are poignant moments-especially the scenes between Billy and his mother, which depict a relationship partially driven by love, but also by conflict and mutual distrust. A reader who appreciates the game of baseball, will enjoy this book-especially if he or she is familiar with how the game used to be played by the kids themselves in an open field without adults hounding their every move. The kids created their own rules, such as no one base rule, and when a player hits a fly ball and the outfielder falls into the brook in deep center catching it, it is still an out. This book is not recommended to readers under thirteen, because the language gets raw from time to time and the story deals with sexual issues--not in a prurient sense, but rather in a developmental sense, as an eleven-year-old might actually experience it. The pages are populated by real to life characters and situations, written in a down to earth storytelling style, with a humorous kick to it, and occasionally a surreal feel to it. "IT'S OKAY TO LIE If Your Fingers Are Crossed" is recommended for young adults, adults, and seniors who might find the period, 1950, of special interest.