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: I Believe in Wally Lamb!
Summary: 5 Stars
"The Hour I First Believed" was such a treat; at 740 pages I still wasn't ready for it to end. Sure there is stuff that an editor could have cut out and the story wouldn't have suffered....but the NOVEL would have. Lamb is particularly good at the "story within the story" which he also applied in "I Know This Much Is True". (I particularly enjoyed the epic and amusing saga of the origins of Rheingold Beer.) Some critics have found fault with the length of the novel and the round-about way that the plot develops and the story unfolds. They call the diversions "tangents" with a negative connotation, but for me, it was all a wonderful part of the rich tapestry of the novel. My favorite "big books" always contain diverging and merging rivers of side stories, plots and illuminating flashbacks. Wally Lamb is like Charles Dickens, Pat Conroy and Richard Russo in that way. Devote a little time to this novel and you won't be disappointed.
In this book, Wally Lamb has created a wonderful historical novel. Sure it's recent history - the late 20th and early 21st centuries - but no less historical just because we remember it. He's covered the Love Bug, Columbine, Katrina...he even flashes back to mid 20th century and the Cocoanut [sic] Grove fire; all catastrophes of one sort or another, but isn't it by the catastrophes that we divide up our history?
Another thing Lamb is good at is creating credible characters. This novel's protagonist, Caelum Quirk, is a bit of a jerk, and his wife, Maureen, is more than a little irritating...just like real people. Even when we don't agree with the character's actions, we nevertheless understand their motivations, thanks to Lamb's writing talent.
It took Lamb almost 10 years to complete this novel and it is apparent that he lovingly and painstakingly weighed every choice he made here. "The Hour I First Believed" is worth the wait.
Book Review: A Truly Great, Totally Compelling, Rich, Complex Novel
Summary: 5 Stars
Caelum Quirk is 47 and teaching English at Columbine High School. He and Maureen (Mo) have moved there from Three Rivers, CT. Their reconciliation, following her affair with a co-worker, is still raw and difficult. He teaches English. She is one of the school nurses. The book begins:
"THEY WERE BOTH WORKING THEIR final shift at Blackjack Pizza that night, although nobody but the two of them realized it was that. Give them this much: they were talented secret-keepers.
Caelum knew both Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold from the preceding year, enough to visit with them when he stops by to pick up pizza on his way home. He reflects that Eric had some talent as a writer.
Four days later, as the slaughter proceeds around them, Mo and Velvet, a student she has tried to help, hide in the school library. Stranded in Connecticut, due to an emergency trip to see his dying aunt, Caelum watches the carnage on TV.
The story moves into a profound meditation on how the shooting could have been planned and executed and its affect on Maureen, Caelum, and the other survivors. Simultaneously, it dives deeply into history and parallels from earlier generations that contributed to who Caelum and Maureen have become and the struggles they still face.
Like the unforgettable heroine of "She's Come Undone," Velvet -- the student Maureen tried to help during the shootings -- is complex, damaged, and wonderfully resilient. A serially abused, blue-haired, talented 16-year-old, Velvet is so hostile and scared that she can't get her footing.
None of them can. But they don't stop trying, and growing, until they ...
For those who love real literature, I can't recommend this book too highly!
Book Review: these killers were hidden in plain sight...
Summary: 5 Stars
Wally Lamb places the Columbine massacre at the center of this expansive balancing act between the powers of despair and the blessings of hope.
Lamb leaves no stone unturned in this two act drama. The first section is about Chaos and the impending doom of the tragic shootings nearly ten years ago in an affluent Denver suburb. Most readers will have some sense of how that real tragedy unfolded. The second part delves into the possibility that we were put here for some purpose and that there could be some greater power that exerts an influence on human affairs.
Lamb weaves a sense of forboding throughout this complicated fictional narrative. His narrator, Caelum, is a cynic and Lamb's alter ego in a way. Caelum teaches in a high school as Lamb once did. Caelum's wife Maureen is the tragic figure here. Caelum is mostly an observer and the weak pawn who is shoved back and forth across a bloody chessboard by the forces of time and randomness.
The shooters, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, are not fictionalized into characters by Lamb. This book took ten years to complete and one can imagine Lamb wrestling with the notion of allowing the killers to become products of his creativity or to do as he chose to do here, to let them speak in their own vengeful, evil words left behind in the many sickening videos and writings they created to document their attempt to usurp the will of some higher power.
Even though they are not characters in the book, Harris and Klebold cast dark shadows across every page.
Was it worth the wait? This reviewer utters a stunned YES. Lamb has added another magnificent volume to his legacy as one of our great American novelists.
Book Review: He's Come Undone
Summary: 5 Stars
Did Wally Lamb or Caelum Quirk become undone? I loved the book, but just about became undone my self while reading the book. Lamb covers just about the entire spectrum of emotions, and historical events from the civil war to Iraq, women's rights, prison reform, PTSD, alcoholism, abuse, anger, hate, violence, you name it, he covered it . It is a tour de force of epic proportions. How he kept it together without become completely undone is a marvel. Just holding the 700+ page book in my slightly arthritic fingers was a challenge. I found Quirk to be a rather wimpy, unlikable, self centered, rather dull protagonist. I thought the Columbine tie-in would be off putting, but found it to be one of the center points of the book. I had forgotten what a horrible tragedy it was, and never thought about the collateral damage this type of meaningless violence creates.
I love history finding much of interest in the stories of Quirk's ancestors, but agree with many others that at times is was just too much. Some of the letters for great grandma went on and on, interlacing trivia with important events. The history of the Rheingold beer was just useless and I skipped most of it. I found the supporting characters at times more interesting than Quirk, except for Violet who added nothing to the story.
I wounder what this book was like when first submitted to the editor, or was there an editor? I also bought this book in hard cover; I couldn't wait for the paperback. I don't regret the purchase, and in spite of the excessively detailed history, its still worth 5 stars, but if you are new to Wally Lamb, read "She's Come Undone" first. One of my all time favorites.
Book Review: Disappointed Me, So sad and you just don't care, Only One Star! Amazon won't let me choose anything but Five right now
Summary: 5 Stars
Maybe it was the hype. Before I read the book, I read a review calling it Lamb's best novel to date. I loved his first two so I went into this one with high expectations. Unfortunately it did not live up. The main problem for me was that Lamb never made me care about the two main characters. It wasn't that I didn't like Maureen and Caelum. I just didn't care about them. You know it's bad when you find out a truly deep and scandalous secret about the main character's past and you just. Don't. Care. The end had me skimming the pages, flipping through, just trying to get the thing done.
The book is also deeply depressing. I suppose the last line is supposed to leave us with a sense of hope, but asking one line to stand up to 700 pages of sadness and meaningless loss is too much.
I also didn't think Lamb did much more here than compose a list of tragedies. Yes, Columbine happened. And 9/11 happened, and Katrina happened, and abuse and sadistic prison guards and death and poverty and betrayal happens. That's basically all the book said. It sheds no new truth on the events. Doesn't offer up any new opinions or perspectives. I lived in Littleton and Lamb manages to tick off the gamut of emotions the town went through following Columbine-- but that's all he does. Tick them off like points on a list. Shock, check. Grief, check. Anger, check. Confusion, got it. Any reporter can do that. I hope for more from a fiction writer. I didn't feel that this book had it.