This stunning novel of friendship, guilt, and madness tells the story of two friends torn apart by a terrible secret—and the dark adventure that neither of them ever meant to embark upon.
It's been ten years since the "incident," and Adam has long decided he's better off without his former best friend, Thomas. Adam is working as a tutor, sleeping with the mother of a student, spending lonely nights looking up his ex-girlfriend on Facebook, and pretending that he has some more meaningful plan for an adult life. But when he receives an email from Thomas' mother begging for his help, he finds himself drawn back into his old friend's world and to the past he's tried so desperately to forget. As Adam embarks upon a magnificently strange and unlikely journey, Ben Dolnick spins a tale of spiritual reckoning, of search and escape, of longing, and of reaching for redemption—a tale of near hallucinatory power.
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“A lively, often funny book about being young and smart and confused, fumbling through life in a middle-class American sort of way…Essentially a book about guilt, specifically the kind that results from a small mistake whose reverberations are disproportionately large…In this slim, surprisingly haunting book, Dolnick reminds us that part of being a healthy and functional human is a willingness to act a little bit selfish, a little cruel in our ability to walk away from the pain of others.”
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New York Times Book Review