Small Mediums at LargeOut.com Terry Iacuzzo, columnist for CosmoGirl!, is the psychic to an undisclosed
list of big-wig clients. Here she wryly describes growing up in a
Sicilian-American family of fortune-tellers. Her brother Frank Andrews was
the go-to seer of the '70s and has read some very famous palms (e.g. John
Lennon, Princess Grace, Andy Warhol). Iacuzzo's sister, Rosemary, is
similarly blessed, and their clairvoyant mother informs on philandering
neighborhood husbands. Iacuzzo tells a likable coming-of-age story that's as
much about the all-too-familiar topic of family abuse (during her mother's
kinder moments she tells her kids, "Go play on the Thruway!") and an Orange
Sunshine-infused exploration of self and sexuality in 1960s and '70s
Greenwich Village as it is about Tarot cards, ectoplasm, and chronicles of
death and destruction foretold. Think a female Augusten Burroughs (she, too,
is queer) but with psychic powers. Iacuzzo has a great ear for dialogue and
seamlessly weaves together background music, conversation, and interior
monologue while advising clients: "Go see the doctor"; "You may be a
waitress now, but I see you and you're a lawyer in State Supreme Court";
"Enron? If you buy that, you'll lose everything." When not bogged down with
family histrionics, and with "the Magic Eight Ball never far from reach,"
Iacuzzo capably renders ghost story gold.
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