The Hour I First Believed: A Novel by Wally Lamb
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Book Reviews of The Hour I First Believed: A Novel
Book Review: The Great American Novel
Summary: 5 Stars
Wally Lamb is a writer who works very hard and clearly spends a lot of time working on his art. The fact that we must wait so long in between his works of art is a testament to this. Stephen King publishes a dozen or more novels in the time that Lamb will publish one, but despite the fact that King is one of America's best story tellers, Wally Lamb is in a category of his own. It is difficult to compare him to any other writer, largely because each of his books are so very different than the others that unless you know it you would never know that Mr. Lamb penned "She's Come Undone", along with "I Know This Much Is True" and at last, this masterpiece, "The Hour I First Believed."
From the start, we know that our central character, in first person, is a man who is troubled. The novel weaves it's way through his difficulty with relationships and how, only recently, he released years of pent up anger and had to face "Anger School" while returning to his childhood home: a farm in Central Connecticut where his Aunt Lolly still lives; she was a woman who had a large and loving hand in raising him. Once again, literature shows us that despite our politicians praise for traditional family values, the bizarre situations of parenting and family life, raised Caelum Quirk (our central character)with three to five parents at any given time, an alcoholic father suffering PTSD from his experiences in the Korean War, his mother and Aunt Lolly who not only worked hard on the family farm with his grandfather but worked outside of the home as well. In the center of the farm is a fifty acre state womens prison that had been designed and started by Caelum's great grandmother,Lydia, the woman who raised Aunt Lolly and her twin brother, Caelum's father. This huge metaphor stands in the middle of the family farm for four generations and carries many secrets, but then so does the Quirk Family-so does any family.
PTSD is the prominent element in this book and we see it's effects in subtle ways throughout as well as on grand scales. Caelum's wife Maureen is a school nurse in the same high school where Caelum teaches English: Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado. The book begins about four days before that fateful Tuesday when, at 11:15 or so, the world stopped to watch two very angry and troubled teenage boys declare war on societal cruelty in the public school setting, killing thirteen and wounding many others, emotionally scarring an entire community and changing the entire world forever.
But trauma and tragedy happen all the time and our central character speaks not just in his forty-seven year old guarded and lonely voice, but in his ten year old confused and angry voice, still ripe with guilt and openly discussing his difficulty of allegiance to his drunken father who consistently lets him down and how he allows another student to take the blame for habitually spitting in the school drinking fountains. Right from the start we hear the hints and Mr. Lambs writing style keeps us flipping pages almost as though we are reading Stephen King-a style of writing so different from the thick and intellectual "I know This Much Is True" and the style of "are you SURE this wasn't written by a woman?" in "She's Come Undone." It is in this way that one can see it was no accident: Wally Lamb is one of the finest writers to have ever lived.
Caelum is not in school on Tuesday as Aunt Lolly has died and he returns home to Connecticut as the final heir and so his wife, Maureen, is a survivor of the massacre at school but only barely as she was able to hide herself inside a small cabinet in the library where she listened to the worst of the violence that occurred that day. Caelum turns around and comes home to Colorado to be with Maureen which causes him to miss Aunt Lolly's pre-arranged funeral and then, after a little time, he and Maureen return to the family farm where he begins to clean out the family home that holds four generations of diary's letters, photographs and books as well as four generations of secrets, mysteries and answers. The plot of the story is as brilliant as John Irving would write; the psychological twists and fragility of the human mind are captured on a level that Shirley Jackson would have written.
No one heals from PTSD, they evolve into acceptance and re-cognition, searching for new ways to feel safe and new ways to trust. Everything in our lives shape who we are and who we become. There is an old Iroquois proverb that sways, "When a man dies with him he takes a library" So that the real meat of the book is in the evolution, understanding and acceptance of how our characters will live.
Up until now, 2008 has produced only Richard Russo's "The Bridge of Sighs" that was worthy of The Pulitzer Prize for literature (and in fact, "Bridge of Sighs" is even better than the novel for which Russo already won a Pulitzer) but Mr. Lamb has created a book that stands on it's own, so far above anything else written in such a long time, that "The Hour I First Believed" will join the likes of "To Kill a Mockingbird", "The Sound and The Fury", "Tom Sawyer," and "Gone With The Wind" as remarkable American novels.
Read it and see if I'm not right.
Book Review: Thanks Mr. Lamb for nearly causing a heart attack:~}.
Summary: 5 Stars
Dear Mr. Lamb,
Thanks so much for jerking me around and delivering a jolt every 200 pages of The Hour I First Believed while I was recovering from knee surgery. Your research about Columbine, most of which I'd not read, brought back my own PTSD, so I well understood Maureen's and identified with her as well as Caelum. However, thanks also for reminding me of fresh PTSD and its effects on other family members. And thanks for delivering the final blow in the conclusion which made me lie in bed, literally open-mouthed, so I closed my eyes to rest and wait for my blood pressure to drop. I'd done that the entire month I read this book in bed before the knee surgery, too.
You, Mr. Lamb, have the title wordmeister, non-pareil. Your flawless prose touches every emotion. This book is a total Monty, bodyblock, and mindbender.
The motifs and themes are several but all of a piece. The overall theme is the chaos theory--order, event destroys order, chaos results, and a semblance of order evolves in all its aftermath. Its similar to Robert Penn Warren's "spider-web" motif in All The King's Men which says touch one filament, and you don't know what it will touch and unloose. Ripples cause ripples in the cosmos and in people's daily lives.
A lightly used motif is The Quest. All of the characters are involved in some kind of quest regarding their searches of how they deal with the horrible circumstances they've been dealt and how they fumblingly go on from there. Caelum teaches a course in The Quest in literature to uninterested, pragmatic pupils. Gotta get a job! Velvet, a character teachers know too well, is searching for meaning in an indifferent universe. The psychiatrist asks Caelum if he is on a quest; he is without realizing it immediately.
The genealogy of Caelum's forbears continues to reinforce the idea of the quest and shows the impact of the most terrible blight on our country, slavery and the Civil War, after which unenfranchised women and slaves could not vote in a presidential election. Interesting free black men could vote before women until 1920.
The effects of war are compellingly delineated with stories of Caelum's father, his friend Alphonso's father, and their tragic friend Ulysses--another searcher, aptly named from The Odyssey. The search, the quest, how to keep on living when one has nothing to live for and survives against all odds.
Caelum's struggle to deal with circumstances beyond his control--as if we have any--shows realistic views and dialogue of veracity. His quest continues as we read the history of Rheingold beer as he searches for his biological mother.
Another motif is treatment of prisoners, especially women long ago, which continues today; Maureen who sometimes wishes the killers at Columbine had killed her seems near acceptance when you, Mr. Lamb, deliver the final blow. Of course, you know that. You are the supreme storyteller who has also, considerable of your beautiful, perfect prose, the knack of knocking us out of our complacency and forcing us to feel--the aim of all great prose and poetry.
Mr. Lamb, you succeeded mightily!
When I'd almost finished the book last night, I got another knock-me-out-of-my bed sentence. I lay there with eyes closed and mouth literally open for ten minutes. The sentence was, paraphrased, autopsy showed she died from a cerebral aneurysm.
Dec. 3, 2008, my daughter-in-law, suffered rupture of a brain aneursym. I had major knee surgery Dec. 15. She was in ICU more than three wks. with not even the trained and talented neurosurgeon knowing she would survive. Through the science and modern medical technology and the doctor who had the intelligence to spend years of his life to know what to do, she survived. Her speech is back, and she was released from ICU late on Xmas Eve.
So, dear Mr. Lamb, although you kept me awake when I should've been sleeping, I thank you for a beautiful and enlightening book. I've read, compellingly, all your others, and you never fail to make me think, jar my emotions, and give me a book which is worth reading.
With supreme admiration,
Bobbi Leonard
Book Review: From Chaos Comes Regeneration...
Summary: 5 Stars
"Life is messy, violent, confusing, and hopeful..."
Thus the story unfolds. Caelum Quirk, a high school teacher and his younger wife Maureen, a school nurse, moved to Littleton, Colorado - they both were hired at Columbine High School - and here they hoped to start anew. In their previous home in Three Rivers, Connecticut, their marriage had begun to fracture when Maureen had a love affair with a coworker, and Caelum's response - to take a wrench to the man - landed him in legal troubles and living under a cloud. So as they begin anew, they hope to slowly piece their lives together...Until the day in April, 1999, when havoc rained upon them.
Just before the horrific shootings at Columbine High School, Caelum had briefly returned to Connecticut, visiting with his aunt who had suffered a stroke. When he heard about the carnage at the high school, he returned home to Colorado in a panic, and for a few desperate hours, did not know his wife's fate. Was she still alive? Where was she?
Terrified when the shooting began, Maureen had taken shelter in a cabinet, not knowing when or if she would be targeted. She survived...And the Quirks clung to the miracle of her survival. But then, Maureen seemed to crawl into a deep hole, unable to function. So the Quirks fled back to Connecticut, to the family farm, hoping to put the tragic events behind them, and to bury the aunt who has died.
But nothing is simple and the disastrous changes wrought on that tragic day have left deep wounds. Suffering from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, Maureen's life continues to unravel, one day at a time. She becomes a shadow of her former self, an emaciated shell. In therapy, she makes little if any progress. And she begins to abuse the medications she takes. Caelum, too, suffers as their lives take on this new shape - controlled by the emotional chaos that has engulfed them since that day.
At some point, however, Maureen seems to improve and begins working as a nurse again. But with easy access to medications, it is not long before she is addicted.
Then one night, driving home from work and under the influence, Maureen hits and kills a young boy with her car.
The consequences are grave. Imprisoned, Maureen begins another horrendous journey, while Caelum tries to continue teaching, but barely exists...almost as if he, too, is serving a sentence. Meanwhile, a civil lawsuit is pending.
In the midst of the chaos of their lives, Caelum begins sorting through his aunt's belongings and finds diaries and documents that reveal family history, and eventually, some unimaginable secrets. As Caelum tries to reconstruct his family history in light of his findings, more dire events are uncovered.
Through everything he experiences, and with all that Maureen is facing, the future looks bleak indeed.
But then, as if from above, Caelum comes to realize that "We lived, lulled, on the fault line of chaos. Change could come explosively, and out of nowhere..."...and "...some explosion - as local as rifle fire, as worldwide as war - can set things reeling in a whole different direction,
can cause a fork in the road. And one path may lead to disintegration, the other to a reordered world."
Regeneration and hope can emerge from chaos. A reordered world can come from disintegration.
Toward the end of this long and very compelling novel, even as more tragedy befalls our characters, Caelum reaches a point of believing....And a feeling of hope is restored.
The Hour I First Believed: A Novel ,from the talented Wally Lamb is a thought-provoking, philosophical exploration of what happens to people - ordinary individuals - when disaster strikes.
By Laurel-Rain Snow
Author of:
Web of Tyranny, etc.
Book Review: A Novel Worth Waiting For. . .
Summary: 5 Stars
As many others here, after I Know This Much Is True - an all-time favorite of mine - I waited very anxiously for Wally Lamb's next publication. It seemed to take forever, but The Hour I First Believed finally came out.
I must say that it took me three tries to get through this book, starting from last November, and just finishing last week, but I blame that more on personal circumstances than anything else. Once you fully allow yourself to get into it, this book simply carries you.
Once I got to the moment we all knew was coming at Columbine, I started becoming more and more entranced. By the middle of the book, I was reading every night and very curious to find out what happened next and just how the family mysteries unraveled.
I can't deny that I love Lamb's style. I think he's trendsetting and bold, and explores things I would never otherwise even think about. And yet he does so in such a way that you can understand and you can feel along with the characters, even if your "story" couldn't be any more different than theirs. Three books now, and that still continues to amaze me.
That being said, I must admit two things. One, there were parts of this novel that bored me, especially the at-times overwhelming amount of family history in letters. They were to a degree necessary and some were very interesting, but others were painful and I honestly rushed to get through them.
And two, even with how amazed I am with this novel, I don't think it touches I Know This Much Is True. And perhaps that is personal preference. When I closed that book I thought - I can't imagine reading a more complete and compelling book, maybe ever. But when I closed The Hour I First Believed - I thought while it was such a wonderful job of mixing so many elements together and making me think, that I just didn't see it being as complete a novel as his other works.
Now, that too, can be a matter of circumstances. As he wrote in his thoughts post writing, he expressed how difficult at times the process was, and how our whole American world transformed during the time period during which he was writing this novel. Those things changed our lives; I can imagine they would certainly change the shape of whatever novel he was writing. I sense on a personal level from reading it, and I sense he believes he was influenced by such.
Overall, I still would call this an amazing book. Lamb's talent is so amazing, I cannot imagine giving less than five stars. It's just such a thought provoking book, I'd encourage people to read it, regardless. But, as I think I've made clear, his second book is still one of my very favorites.
And, of course, I will look forward to his next work. I hope it doesn't take another ten years, but admittedly, part of me thought, well, when all was said and done, yes, this book was indeed worth the wait.
Book Review: A rich novel filled with layers of detail and intrigue
Summary: 5 Stars
Wally Lamb is most definitely, one of my favorite authors. I was thrilled when I heard about his upcoming novel, The Hour I First Believed and was anxious to read the book. I had read his previous novels and enjoyed them both and I had a feeling that this one would not disapoint. I was right, The Hour I First Believed, is a rich novel filled with layers of detail and intrigue that it felt like I was peeling away the layers of an onion waiting to reach the core or the truth at the center. I never knew exactly where the story would take me and the storytelling was superb. The novel held my interest throughout and that says a lot as this book is over 700 pages! There were some sad and difficult moments to read and I found myself deeply touched by many of the events. I found the main character, Caelum Quirk to be following the same metaphor of peeling away the layers of an onion. He was able to peel away the layers related to his life to find the heart of his issues and to discover some of the the truth that he sought. I felt connected to the characters who were extremely well developed throughout the story. After I finished the book, I would often think of the characters and what may have happened next. To me, that is a sign of a great novel!
The author chose to use a unique style of combining a fictional story with non-fictional events. Throughout the novel he wove in details related to Columbine, 9/11 , Hurricane Katrina, the history and conditions of women's prisons and others. I found this style very effective as I had been affected by these events through media and from knowing others effected by these tragedies and their own personal experiences. As readers, most of us have been affected in some way by the events in our world and can relate to that experience. I am very fond of epistolary novels and love reading books related to letters and journals. This is a favorite style of writing that I like to read. Wally Lamb chose to add journals , diaries and letters related to second generational family members to share the story. To me, this was an enhancement to the novel which personalized the story and helped to better understand the characters family history.
The search for faith is a strong theme in the book. The book explores the possibility that randomness controls our existence as well as exploring the theories of chaos vs. order. I loved the symbolism connected to the Praying Mantis that was woven throughout the novel. The Mantis appeared to me to symbolize hope and of stillness, the reminder to listen to the small voice within and you will eventually find the answers you are looking for .