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: Stupendous 700-page Opus
Summary: 5 Stars
Wally Lamb is not a prolific author but when he does release a book, he always makes it worth the wait. His 1992 publication "She's Come Undone" told the story of a troubled woman named Dolores Price whose progression from childhood into adulthood beheld tragedy after tragedy. His 1998 follow-up "I Know This Much Is True" chronicles the life of Dominick Birdsey, an identical twin who unearths many truths about his past while wrestling with inner demons. Both titles made the famed Oprah's Book Club list and Lamb's latest explores territory made familiar in "I Know This Much Is True", returning to Three Rivers, CT and dealing with things such as PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder), infidelity and long-kept family secrets.
"The Hour I First Believed" differs from its counterparts in that it explores the aftermath of a notorious historical event: the Columbine High School massacre. It is a deeply woven first-person narrative that thoroughly dissects and evolves protagonist Caelum Quirk's psyche and family history. Containing in-depth characterization, exceptional inner dialogue as well as outer dialogue and a great deal of emotional resonance with compelling viewpoint from his main character all packed into a whopping 700+ pages, this novel needs a literal commitment from a diligent and enthusiastic reader. Lamb's novels have never been a walk in the park and considering that it took a great many years for him to complete this latest publication (nine years, to be exact), a reader will need to demonstrate a distinct amount of patience and concentration on the book's multifaceted text. Those who stay the course will be richly rewarded by a story that Lamb himself says was "placing a fictional protagonist inside a confounding nonfictional maze and challenging him to locate, at its center, the monsters he would need to confront and the means by which he might save himself and others".
The story follows Caelum from Connecticut to Colorado and back, his life with his third wife Maureen thrown into an upheaval after she is caught having an affair with a local man in Caelum's hometown of Three Rivers. Trying for a clean slate in Littleton, CO, their lives become even more of a mess on April 20, 1999 when Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris made their infamous attack and killed 12 students and 1 teacher before committing suicide. Maureen, a school nurse at Columbine, is witness to the incident and survives by hiding in a cabinet while listening to the rampage outside, the screams of terrified students and faculty and the acrid smell of explosives filling the air. Caelum is trapped in Connecticut attending to his Aunt Lolly's death when he hears of the shootings and races home, not knowing whether Maureen is alive or dead. When they do finally come together, she is a mere shadow of her former self, severely traumatized by the events. In the process of struggling to get better, Maureen becomes chemically dependent on anti-anxiety medications prescribed by her psychiatrist. Their return to Connecticut in order to escape the horrors of Columbine proves to be a catalyst for Caelum's haunted past and some old family secrets are literally dug up in the process. Both continually suffer from inner conflict while trying to repair their twice-broken relationship and the culmination of events begets an astonishing and bittersweet conclusion.
Lamb masterfully mixes fact with fiction, oft describing Harris and Klebold's attack on the school in scrupulous detail and much how it was reported to have gone down. He recreates the fear and suffering of those who survived and perished in those all too brief but terrifying moments and conjectures through his characters on what instigated such inscrutable enmity and brutality from two young boys from good homes. Most of all, it examines human relationships and how the tides of life and tragedy can change those relationships for the better or worse. Lamb also plays around with ideas such as chaos theory, better known as the "butterfly effect", to explain the small instances which play a part in creating significant events.
The heart of his novel can best be summed up in this excerpt from page 300:
"April 20, 1999. In the days, weeks, months and years, now, since they opened fire, I have searched wherever I could for the whys, hows, and whether-or-nots of Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold's rampage. They had been my students first, but I became theirs, stalking them so that I might rescue my wife from the aftermath of what they'd done. On that day, Maureen had escaped execution by opening a cabinet door and entering a maze - a many-corridored prison whose four outer walls were fear, anger, guilt and grief. And because I was powerless to retrieve her - because I, too, entered the labyrinth and became lost - my only option was to find its center, confront the two-headed monster who waited for me there, and murder it. Murder the murderers, who had already murdered themselves."
Bottom line: If you're looking for one of the best novels of 2008, look no further. Lamb offers his readers another extensive and deeply moving story that reaches beyond the limitations of simple fiction and arduously tows at the heart of such matters as love, loss, betrayal and forgiveness. Don't let it bypass your "To Be Read" list.
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: Great Expectations
Summary: 4 Stars
My sister and I have worried and complained about the fact that Wally Lamb has not written a novel in 10 years. I worried that Oprah had made him so successful that he did not feel compelled to write more fiction. She worried that he had found his true calling at the women's prison and didn't have time to write. All of this angst was the result of our reactions to "I Know This Much is True." It provided me with one of my best reading experiences ever. Both of his previous novels are constructed in such a way that I could not stop reading them. Despite its length, I read "I Know This Much is True" in a couple days. It is a "drop everything, I've got to read" kind of book.
Once the announcement of the release of "The Hour I First Believed" was issued, we vacillated between joy and anxiety. We knew that our expectations were astronomically high. So simultaneously, we fretted that Mr. Lamb could not live up to his past glory and that the book would be so wonderful that we could not fully savor the goodness. Now that I have finished his newest novel, I find that the reality of my experience is somewhere in the middle.
Again, his writing is exceptional. He uses wonderful words in clear, consequential prose. I am awed by the psychological insight that he uses to create real, deeply interesting characters. I am overwhelmed (again) with his ability to create tension within the narrative. He, more than any other author that I have read, makes me deeply curious about the psyche of the characters, their relationships, and their journeys.
This time around, however, the sum of this book's parts is better than the whole. Unfortunately, the multiple stories and story lines do not create notable literary synergy. I think that there is enough very good stuff in this book to make 2 excellent novels, and I think that we could pluck out several stunning short stories. Disappointingly, when they are put together, they do not merge and create fictional brilliance. There are too many disparate themes to resolve effectively. Furthermore, the past and present story lines do not support each other especially well. For example, the PTSD line is very meaningful in relationship to Columbine, but it did not seem to be a significant part of the Civil War story.
I also sense some editorial malaise. Parts of the story could have been tightened up to create better connection among the various plot lines. For, example, Maureen's Columbine experience was riveting. However, once it was over, it almost disappeared. It appears that it was included only to set up the present day connection to the prison in Connecticut. The experiences at and around Columbine High School are extremely powerful when they happen, but their significance wanes as other generations are explored. Furthermore, the memory of Maureen's and Velvet's palpable trauma are all but forgotten by the end of the book. Keeping Columbine alive from beginning to end could have strengthened and intensified the primary themes. I know that there are many reasons to reach the decision that the book is good enough to publish, but I think that this one could have been pushed to another level through some more critical analysis and perhaps some pruning and re-ordering.
I remember that some people did not like the "book within a book" approach used in "I Know This Much Is True." I liked it because it provided a counterbalance to the present day emotional action. The present day created the tension, and the journal entries slowed things down and filled in the blanks. This approach did not work so well In "The Hour I First Believed." The present day action dropped off too soon, and the historical pieces slammed on the brakes of the novel's momentum. The center of gravity leans toward the Quirk, Popper, and Hutchinson ancestors without giving enough energy to the Caelum and Maureen plot.
One more observation... I think that Elizabeth Popper turns into a combination of Clara Barton and Forest Gump. She travels in the same professional, political, and social sphere as Clara did before and during the Civil War, and she meets every living celebrity of her time just as Forest did.
The book is very, very good. If I had been able to control my expectations, I could deem it excellent. Mr. Lamb creates wondrous fiction. Please don't keep us waiting another 10 years!!
Book Review: Well-Written But Flawed ... Too Much Going On
Summary: 3 Stars
Story Overview
This is the story of Caelum Quirk -- a middle-aged teacher who is trying to come to terms with his present, his past and his troubled marriage. Married to Maureen (his third wife), Caelum's story begins with his troubles handling Maureen's infidelity. In an attempt to save their marriage, they leave their home in Connecticut and move to Littleton Colorado, where they work at Columbine High School. (Yes...that Columbine High School. Maureen is the school nurse and Caelum is an English teacher.) The move seems to help the marriage somewhat, but Caelum and Maureen still have moments of distance between them. Then Caelum's beloved aunt -- and his only link to his family -- suffers a stroke and Caelum returns to Connecticut to say goodbye. While in Connecticut, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold go on their well-publicized rampage in the high school.
Panicked and unable to reach Maureen, Caelum returns in a panic to Littleton. He finally locates her, but she is a shell of her former self. Trapped in the library during the shootings, Maureen is unable to cope with the fact that she has survived. Maureen begins to unravel. Attempting to help Maureen deal with her post-traumatic stress disorder, Caelum moves them back to his aunt's house in Connecticut. There, Maureen continues to deteriorate while Caelum struggles to keep them financially afloat. During this time, Caelum discovers a secret family history that casts a new light on everything he thought was true about his family.
My Thoughts
You may be thinking "Wow, just go tell us the whole story, why don't you?" Believe me when I tell you that I just gave you the bare bones plot. There is A LOT going on in this book, which I think is ultimately its fatal flaw.
Don't get me wrong. Wally Lamb is a fantastic writer, and I didn't once consider not finishing this book. However, there is so much going on that I felt that the novel suffered. There are long sections of the book devoted to Caelum's ancestor, Lillian Popper, and her experiences during the Civil War era. (These sections are either provided as diary entries or as excerpts from a "thesis" written by one of the characters.) There is a lengthy "transcript" from when Caelum interviews an older gentleman about the history of a cigarette company. There are subplots about Iraq war veterans, Hurricane Katrina victims, a prison, a family unable to accept their favored son's homosexuality, and Caelum's best friend's search for love and the perfect car. In short, there is material enough in this book for about three novels, but Lamb packs it all into one. Ultimately, I think this was a mistake. If Lamb wanted to write about Lillian Popper's life in such depth, perhaps he should have made this a separate novel.
I also have an issue with some of the amazing coincidences that Lamb contrives for his characters. Isn't it just a little too convenient that the Hurricane Katrina victims he offers shelter to include a women's studies graduate student that pulls together the convoluted story of Caelum's family? And during one point, so much stuff happens at the same time that I just threw up my hands in disbelief.
But...there is no getting around the fact that Wally Lamb is a gifted writer. In the case of this book, I felt like he just had too much to say and crammed it all together into one book. I felt it would have been enough to focus on Caelum and Maureen's marriage and their post-Columbine experiences. I think if the author had pulled out three of the different story threads (the Columbine story, the Lillian Popper story, the Iraq war veteran story), he could have had three distinct and more focused novels. As it is, you get it all in one big, sprawling book, and none of the stories get the attention and focus they deserve.
My Final Recommendation
Ultimately, I cannot give this book a no-holds-barred recommendation. I wish I could have liked this book more because the writing itself is darn good, and I love how Lamb incorporates all the little details that squarely places his story in the time in which it was happening. But I really do think the book is flawed because of its sprawl and disjointed plot. Here's wishing Mr. Lamb's next book is a little more focused.
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