This novel is just chock full of all my favorite literary subjects: pain, guilt, truth, redemption. The hook is that Adam and Thomas, who had been best friends in school, are changed by an event. This event causes Adam to retreat from Thomas for ten years, until he is pulled back into Thomas's life by a plea from his parents. Please help our son.
I didn't know where the story of Adam and Thomas was going to take me, but the journey was riveting.
At the Bottom of Everything is a short novel, but it crosses many an emotional landscape. If you wonder how people can live with a terrible knowledge and what that knowledge does to their everyday life; and at what cost come redemption (if it's even possible) then give Ben Dolnick's novel a try.