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: Not "why" or "if" we believe, but "how"...
Summary: 5 Stars
Although quite long with many subplots, this story of a middle-aged man's search for something to believe in has deeply touched me. The book is divided into several sections, each dealing with different aspects of the lives and choices made by the many characters in the novel from friends to relatives to persons who lived during the time and era being described. The saga spans the periods of years from the 1800s to present day and includes sociological, cultural, and historical perspectives.
In the first part of the story-- and the one that causes the significant conflict for the main character in the book-- the somewhat unsympathetic and unlikable narrator Caelum Quirk is an English teacher off tending to a dying aunt and his wife a part-time nurse at Columbine High School in Colorado at the time that the massacre of students takes place there in April, 1999. (Though the facts of the rampage are presented in the context of fiction, this is an incredibly moving section of the book.) His wife Maureen (Mo) cannot recover from surviving that terrible day and suffers from post traumatic stress disorder. Unable to function, she withdraws and finds solace in illegally obtained prescription drugs. Without going further to convey more plot details, suffice to say that the marriage falters and Caelum is forced to deal with many issues, not the least of which is confounded when historical documents and old letters belonging to his aunt reveal a family history contrary to what he thought he knew.
Part mystery, part expose, the story of Caelum's quest to find out the truth of himself and his family will urge the reader forward until the very last page is turned. This is a novel that draws one in and never lets go; the search for hope and faith, the profound wish that life has meaning and that there is a purpose for it all -- the good or the evil.
Other reviewers have remarked that the plethora of extraneous and/or historical information, the author's lengthy descriptions of certain aspects of the Civil War, and the dissertation written by one of the characters that he included might be off-putting, but I found the detail and description interesting. This is a saga that spans several generations and involves keeping straight many characters and their relationships to each other. There are many details to keep in mind and thus, I just couldn't put it down so as not to get too confused.
Highly recommended. This is one to remember long after the last page is turned.
Book Review: American Tragedies Revealed
Summary: 5 Stars
Wally Lamb's latest novel is a manifesto of American Grief. I just finished the novel yesterday, and when I woke up this morning, I found out that less than fifty miles away from where I live, in a small town outside of a dying American city (and don't get me wrong, I truly love Buffalo) a plane crashed into a house in a quiet neighborhood. 49 people were killed. And watching the intense media coverage of this latest American tragedy, I can't help but wonder if Lamb would have shoved this incident into his novel as well. In many ways, it is a brilliant, well thought out story about a man, Caelum Quirk, whose wife survives the Columbine shootings. Curled up, hiding from the killers in a desk in the library, she emerges from the incident radically changed, a victim suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. You know who else might have experienced PTSD? Mothers who have lost children in war, men who came back from the Civil War, the Korean war, the Iraq War. Women who accidentally shook their babies to death. People who lost everything in hurricane Katrina. Wally Lamb manages to insert each of these horrific pieces of American detail into his novel, in incredibly vivid detail and emotion. Although 9/11 is referred to several times, I am really shocked that someone who had survived the collapse of the World Trade Center did not show up in Caelum's day-to-day life.
Is it too much? Who am I to say? As Caelum, a two-time divorcee accused of emotional detachment, attends to his broken wife, he comes across many other "survivors." The people he meets through the novel, the ancestors he discovers through old letters and memoirs, and the way America handles herself in a post 9/11 world, Caelum does emerge a stronger, more giving and loving character. There are several themes woven through the story, but the one most prominent for me was "how could a loving God allow innocent people to suffer?" How could God allow the towers to fall, people's homes to be ravaged in a hurricane, planes to fall from the sky... how could He allow children to be raped and abused, wars to go on without good reason... how could He allow kids to brutally murder other kids? It is the question of the ages. The title "The Hour I First Believed" should imply that Lamb's answer is at least a hopeful one. At for that reason alone, I give the book five well-earned stars.
Book Review: Wonderful
Summary: 5 Stars
I read 'This Much I Know is True' for the first time just a month or two ago. I would ideally have had more time between these two and I would recommend others not read them so near each other, regardless of the order.
I loved 'This Much I Know is True' - it is one of the best books I have ever touched. But 'The Hour I First Believed' is a better book. I cared more, I cried more and it just spoke to me more.
The main criticism is that it is these two books are very similar. He crosses characters between books, well he uses characters from 'This Much' in this new book. But more than that, the main characters are similar. Some external things to them are similar. They both have the world break around them and finding some peace after being totally broke.
Some might find the message to be a little preachy or political, even more so with the author's notes. I think the book is not all that preachy with the Anti-war stuff. He speaks more to it after, but to me it is not the driving force behind this in any way.
Some might also find fault with using a real life event, with the school shootings in Colorado. It bothered me at first, but in the end I think it was the right decision. I think fictionalizing a school shooting would never have had the impact and would have felt a bit cheesy. In so much that since we all have lived through the real thing (I mean that respectfully as an outsider, not knowing the real pain) that a made up one would seem odd. Just like I think the description of a US terrorist attack on the scale of 9/11 but not 9/11 as a backdrop would lack the impact. The sad thing is that these events are so horrible that if someone tells you a made up version it just seems far fetched. Not sure if that makes sense.
I hope this book does not cause more pain for those that lived that nightmare. Rather I hope such a book heals all kinds of hurting people.
I have yet to read an author that captures the concept of being broken, living with someone broken, loving something broken like Wally Lamb does. If you are broken, read his things. If you are not and you are scared of when you will be, as we all will be at some point, read his things. It gives you hope.
Thank you so much for the gift of this book.
Book Review: A-mazing
Summary: 5 Stars
I really enjoyed this book, although it seemed at times like the author was using the same ingredients bake a slightly different dessert. All the elements of "I Know This Much Is True," are here. A protagonist who has anger management issues and a troubled marriage? Check. Abusive parents and shameful family secrets? Check. An indictment of the prison system on its inhabitants' mental health. A backstory that takes hundreds of pages and involves a smorgasbord of obscure, seemingly irrelevant details, plus a history lesson? Check. And two of the protagonists from previous books (Dominck Birdsey and Dolores Price) make a cameo here. Dominick and his brother's therapist also has a role.
Plot: Caelum Quirk and his wife Maureen are a teacher and a nurse respectively at Columbine High School (yes, that Columbine High School). During the infamous school shooting, Caelum is fortunate enough to be away, but Maureen is forced to hide while it unfolds. Most of the book takes place during the aftermath, exploring how post-traumatic stress affects both the survivor and her family. However, eventually, Maureen and her problems disappear (kind of like Thomas' in "I Know This Much is True), and the rest of the book is devoted to Caelum's family history. Real life figures, such as authors and suffragettes interact with the fictional cast.
My only real quibble with the book is that after the focus shifted from Maureen, I kept wondering about her and was only half-interested in the rest of Caelum's family history. After all, she was the one who'd survived Columbine and the one of the most proactive characters who remained alive throughout the entire book. Also, Caelum declares that he's gotten obsessed with the Columbine killers but after a chapter, that seemed to have vanished, odd considering how traumatized his wife was. The book didn't really grapple with the question of what makes a teen commit a mass crime, except to say that bullying is bad. In short, I kept expecting the book to take a direction it didn't.
Book Review: A slumber book as in 'consciousness of the rest of the world is suspended'
Summary: 5 Stars
I have been in a slumber this past three days...a slumber of deep reading where once the kids leave for school, one opens a book and read till 3 p.m, then in 45 minutes before the school bus is back, one throws together a super quick super, straighten the main level of the house in the style of 'sweeping under the rug' i.e it looks someone tidied up but please don't open the hallway closet.
I go into these deep slumbers when I am reading a book that I can't put down. The writing is so good, the prose is so powerful and the hunger for what happened next is so strong that I simply have to put the rest of life mundanes and pleasures on hold.
The book "The Hour I First Believed" by Wally lamb is one such book. I don't how to categorize this massive 752 pages monster that I devoured in less then 72 hours. For some reason the movie Forrest Gump comes to mind..remember how entertaining it was and yet equal parts tragic and uplifting. The hour I First Believed is as American a novel as Forrest Gump was a movie about America and Americans.
The book is about a family whose dysfunctions elements are quintessential American: thrice divorced people, alcoholic parents, adopted children who don't know they are adopted,devastating school violence, teenage drug use, teenagers who haven't come out of the closet, there is crime and then there is punishment...American style.
There is a strong undercurrent of history through out the novel from civil war to Iraq war yet I did not see as a war novel.. one can very well argue it is a modern day love story between the main characters ,a middle age couple who has been married for 12 years.
I will end this review by quoting what Jennie Yabroff said in her 12/22/08 Newsweek article about 'The Corrections' by Jonathan Franzen ( a book I have Not read so forgive me if I am totally off tangent here):
"It is a warm social novel on an epic scale, (a) sort of cultural temperature-taking....."