Table Money

By the Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist and author (Table Money, The Gang That Couldn't Shoot Straight), this funny, gutsy ""fable'' treats harsh truths with bitter irony. The grim comedy begins when orders from the Vatican send Fr. Cosgrove from his post in Africa to stamp out sin (i.e., illicit sex) in America. With his companion Great Big, a sometimes backsliding former cannibal, the priest arrives in New York City, where he learns about real sin. Through Baby Rock, a young black boy who befriends them, Cosgrove and Great Big become involved with the city's homeless and hungry, victims of ``public assistance,'' and soon all hell breaks loose in Manhattan. There is hardly time to gasp between the swift developments, when the missionary and hungry Great Big declare war on all the exploiters of the have-nots: the pious rich types who pretend to help the poor, the bureaucratic flunkies who euchre welfare clients out of sustenance, even the Mafia. The dialogue is straight on and mean, the ethnic types funny and recognizable, with the feel of the city throbbing between the lines. This is Breslin at his bestpurely unbeatable. BOMC selection. (January 29)