Horse Crazy

The first novel from Gary Indiana, Horse Crazy tells the story of a 35 year-old writer for a New York arts and culture magazine whose life melts into a fever dream when he falls in love with handsome, charming, possibly heroin-addicted, and almost certainly insane Gregory Burgess. In the derelict brownstones of the Lower East Side in the late eighties, among the coked-out restauranteurs and art world impresarios of the supposed ''downtown scene,'' the narrator wanders through the fog of passion. Meanwhile, the AIDS epidemic is spreading through the city, and New York friendships sputter to an end.