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: He's done it again
Summary: 5 Stars
I was so happy to see this book that I immediately bought it in spite of the fact that the details from the book jacket didn't interest me. I knew that whatever the content, a novel written by Wally Lamb would entertain. I was not disappointed.
Other reviewers found the story boring. Boring??? Where else could you read about Mark Twain, the story of Rheingold Beer, Columbine High School with a little bit of New Orleans, post Katrina (just to name a few) all in one novel. I found myself more than once going to the computer to learn more about people and places mentioned in the story.
Some reviewers thought that the main character Caelum was unlikeable. How could anyone not like someone whose innermost fears, thoughts, desires and foibles are shown without editing? I found myself empathizing fully with Caelum. The use of the first person was instrumental in that.
The meandering style of the novel, going back and forth between time periods is typical of Wally Lamb and is what makes his novels so compelling.
After I finished this novel, I turned once again to "She's Come Undone", I needed to immerse myself again in Lamb's style.
Book Review: A Wild Ride
Summary: 5 Stars
I waited, with much anticipation, for this novel. I was not disappointed. Being familiar with the general area in which the story is set, I enjoyed the setting references and "changed names" of the places Mr. Lamb used to create the backdrop for this "wild ride" of a story. He has woven several historical tragedies through this gut-wrenching, heart pounding work of fiction. It is truly remarkable. The story is dark, addictive, and provocative. It's like watching a tragedy unfold before your eyes, and not being able to stop looking or do anything about it... If you want a reminder that your life can't possibly be as bad as someone else's, read this novel.
Caelum Quirk is all at once a hero, and a victim. He does the best he can, all the while delving much deeper into his past than I'm sure he cared to. Ultimately, though, it was the past he discovered that helped him move, kicking and screaming, into his future.
I will not compare this novel to his first two; I believe this novel is a accumulation of what Mr. Lamb has learned about people and life in the last ten years since he wrote "She's Come Undone". Much has happened, and we too, have evolved. Thank you, Mr. Lamb.
Book Review: Can others not have noticed?
Summary: 5 Stars
Fundamentally, this novel is about the question of meaningful death. NOT meaningful lives (so many are cut brief in the book), but meaningful (or meaningless?) ends. There is so much going on that, if you can't relate, you must not have lived much in the last 100 years or so. For myself in this novel, the moment came with the referrals back to the 1940s. One of my high school teachers was a fireman responding to the Cocoanut Grove Fire, and he admitted he was only half the man he had been - after that "endless experience" of the meaningless deaths of hundreds of young and beautiful people.
From this perspective, you come to realize that this book is ghost-haunted throughout and, in this regard reminds me of various works by Walker Percy and John Champlin Gardner, Jr. Even the Grapes of Wrath comes to mind - remember now how many die in that classic, one at a time?
Many will be frightened by the thought that the ghosts of the Columbine killers wander and may wander through our collective memories forever. Does that make their deaths any more meaningful?
Big questions, folks. Big moral questions.
Book Review: Wally Lamb: Up There With Annie Dillard as One of the Best Contemporary Writers Producing Literature- EXTRAORDINARY
Summary: 5 Stars
I rank Wally Lamb as one of the greatest living writers. His novels are such beautiful, speculative paeans to being assertive with choice, love, work and forgivness in life. This new novel is no exception- what other writer could extract such beauty, meaning, philosophy, and explorative meditation on quantum theory and love as such is found in "The Hour I First Believed", let along derive some kind of understanding from the horrors of the Columbine massacre?
If great writing tackles the difficult, mysterious and unfortunately banal tragedies that pummel a nation and a people, Lamb's novels seek to understand the growing disharmony between man and nature, our tendencies to seek violence rather than love and introspection and the growing tendencies toward mental/bodily discord. A novel gravely and sorely overdue! Thank you Mr. Lamb. Five Stars. Worth the time. The cover reminds me- whether meant to allude to or not- Edna St. Vincent Millay's:
"My candle burns at both ends;
It will not last the night;
But ah, my foes, and oh, my friends--
It gives a lovely light!"
Book Review: Dark but Beautiful
Summary: 5 Stars
If you allow it, this book will effect your mood. The story ties in actual events that took place at Columbine High with the actual people, places and evidence tied into a fictional account of the narrator/author's account of things happining in his life before,during and the most compelling, dark period, after the columbine murders and it's affect it takes on himself and his wife and the world around him. This is truly dark stuff, because you KNOW that someone, somewhere is experiencing exactly what your reading in this book.
If the general story doesn't sound interesting enough for a 750+ page hardcover book, don't worry, the story will not allow you to put the book down as the pages fly by. I have had the book for 3 days and have finished it and didn't once feel like I was reading a (big) book.
Great book, but beware. The author touches on alot of personal subjects that cover depression, anxiety, sexual abuse, murder, adultery, and a host of others that can and will carry with you after you put the book down.