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A review by karieh13
At the Bottom of Everything by Ben Dolnick
4.0
The strongest aspects of this book were the observations the main character made, not on his life or his friend Thomas’s life, but on life in general. Despite his young(ish) age – an ageless wisdom shines through at times that really caught my attention.
“There are certain places, certain objects, that seem in some hard-to-explain way alive, and that gives a weird charmed quality to everything you do in them or with them. When I was little I seemed to get this feeling more regularly; it would come over me when I was holding a glass, or wearing a particular sweater, or sitting in the unpainted corner of the kitchen in one of the first apartments I remember. Warmth? Happiness? Home? What comes to mind is the way wood sometimes looks in sunlight; there’s a Vermeer-ish quality to what I’m talking about.”
Some of the feelings in this story are so universal – and the author does a simply amazing job encapsulating these shared human experiences. This book hinges on one shattering moment – an event that ends the relatively normal and pleasant lives that Adam and Thomas have been living. This moment is described in a snapshot that just haunted me.
“There’s a moment just after breaking something (the glass slips from your fingertips, your elbow catches the vase) in which it feels like if you stand there, absolutely still, baring your teeth, you should be able to suck time backward like an indrawn breath. Your hand hangs there in the air, your eyes fall shut, you’re like someone playing a children’s game with a whistle and a voice that shouts, “Freeze!”
Adam and Thomas go their separate ways, only to come together again in nearly unrecognizable circumstances. Thomas, who has been searching for answers, is then sought out by Adam – who had been trying to deny the past. Only when pushed far past his emotional and physical limits does he realize the impact of their childhood actions.
“I was, of course, incredibly tired, but past a certain point tiredness stops registering primarily as a desire to be asleep. It was as if my body or brain had at some point in the past few days accepted that I was never again going to get adequate sleep, so it had constructed a jittery, pain-spiked simulation of wakefulness.”
Even then, Adam is able to recover some sense of a normal life – but not one that is unaffected by all he has experienced.
“There’s a tendency, I think, to discount the suffering in fear; after the fact, once the tests have come back negative or the call’s been returned, we think, It wasn’t as bad as all that. We let our present relief retouch our past terror.”
One brief moment, one action followed by inaction changed everything. Changed the lives of so many people – and effectively ended the lives of others.
This was a powerful story, but in different ways than I had expected.
“There are certain places, certain objects, that seem in some hard-to-explain way alive, and that gives a weird charmed quality to everything you do in them or with them. When I was little I seemed to get this feeling more regularly; it would come over me when I was holding a glass, or wearing a particular sweater, or sitting in the unpainted corner of the kitchen in one of the first apartments I remember. Warmth? Happiness? Home? What comes to mind is the way wood sometimes looks in sunlight; there’s a Vermeer-ish quality to what I’m talking about.”
Some of the feelings in this story are so universal – and the author does a simply amazing job encapsulating these shared human experiences. This book hinges on one shattering moment – an event that ends the relatively normal and pleasant lives that Adam and Thomas have been living. This moment is described in a snapshot that just haunted me.
“There’s a moment just after breaking something (the glass slips from your fingertips, your elbow catches the vase) in which it feels like if you stand there, absolutely still, baring your teeth, you should be able to suck time backward like an indrawn breath. Your hand hangs there in the air, your eyes fall shut, you’re like someone playing a children’s game with a whistle and a voice that shouts, “Freeze!”
Adam and Thomas go their separate ways, only to come together again in nearly unrecognizable circumstances. Thomas, who has been searching for answers, is then sought out by Adam – who had been trying to deny the past. Only when pushed far past his emotional and physical limits does he realize the impact of their childhood actions.
“I was, of course, incredibly tired, but past a certain point tiredness stops registering primarily as a desire to be asleep. It was as if my body or brain had at some point in the past few days accepted that I was never again going to get adequate sleep, so it had constructed a jittery, pain-spiked simulation of wakefulness.”
Even then, Adam is able to recover some sense of a normal life – but not one that is unaffected by all he has experienced.
“There’s a tendency, I think, to discount the suffering in fear; after the fact, once the tests have come back negative or the call’s been returned, we think, It wasn’t as bad as all that. We let our present relief retouch our past terror.”
One brief moment, one action followed by inaction changed everything. Changed the lives of so many people – and effectively ended the lives of others.
This was a powerful story, but in different ways than I had expected.