NOT THE END OF THE WORLD ...

NOT THE END OF THE WORLD by Rebecca Stowe (Norton: $8.95; 151 pp.). Stowe reveals the horrors of schizophrenia in her highly praised first novel. At 12, Maggie Pittsfield feels she’s being torn apart by her wealthy but remote father, her put-upon mother and her harridan of a maternal grandmother. She can escape from her family at the shores of the nearby Great Lakes, but a second, inescapable cast of characters continues the torments in her mind. As Maggie reviews her life, including the trauma of what may have been a physical attack by a teacher, a frightening portrait emerges of a child in agony.