Favulous First Paragraph - Wally Lamb's I Know This Much Is True

This one got me not because of what's on the page but for the image the words made me think- even though he didn't say that. 

ReganBooks first published 1998

On the afternoon of October 12, 1990, my twin brother Thomas entered the Three Rivers, Connecticut Public Library; retreated to one of the rear study carrels, and prayed to God the sacrifice he was about to commit would be deemed acceptable.  Mrs. Theresa Fenneck, the children's librarian, was officially in charge that day because the  head librarian was at an all-day meeting in Hartford.  She approached my brother and told him he'd have to keep his voice down or else leave the library.  She could hear him all the way up at the front desk.  There were other patrons to consider.  If he wanted to pray, she told him, he should go to church, not the library. 


I guess when re-reading it that there isn't much here to make me think Thomas is a kid.  But when I read this I was thinking of a grubby little kid wanting to go into a rear study carrel to pray and it didn't occur to me that he might be praying aloud or anything over a mumble.  So when I got to the end of the paragraph it seemed the author had cleverly led me to believe in a young Thomas who would be distracting perhaps in his youthful eagerness to pray but naw- that's not it, he's talking full voice in a quiet place.

I guess maybe you had to be there.

After the very next paragraph the first one gets put into a new perspective and we're off... good way to start to get my attention; wanting to know what happens next.



Typing note:  No glasses on and print a little blurry on the screen but no difficulty; and a little more blurry in the book, with slight difficulty on some few words.  My semi-colon key is no longer inoperable but the "r" has come off and instead of typing the key I'm typing the little tiny button underneath the key since the R is laid aside and not there where it should be.  It seems to me in the past with this key board and a few others, keys have come off as in cubes; and I could snap them back on.  This time it's just the flat top of the key with the "R" on it that has escaped.

Library note:  The idea that church and library being separate or even at odds is a strong one; yet many people there are believers.  There is some kind of understanding that a library is secular and there was a nice story about that between a red-faced customer and one employee who both attend the same church- no details at this time in a public forum...