“America’s been living on borrowed time all these years, Dominick,” he told me. “Playing the world’s whore, wallowing in our greed. Now we’re going to pay the price.” —Wally Lamb, I Know This Much is True. On the afternoon of October 12, 1990, Thomas Birdsey, a paranoid schizophrenic, entered the Three Rivers, Connecticut, public library, retreated to one of the rear study carrels, and committed a shocking act of self-mutilation. He prayed to God it was an acceptable sacrifice. Thus begins I Know This Much is True, which follows the parallel lives of Thomas and his identical twin brother, Dominick as the two approach middle age. Narrator Dominick Birdsey […]