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: Another solid Lamb read, with some slight departures
Summary: 4 Stars
Wally Lamb has certainly not lost the ability to entrance me into reading his books in about 24 hours. I received _The Hour I First Believed_ on Christmas evening and pondered it a bit before writing my review today, the evening of the 27th. The timeline alone shows that it sucked me in.
While this did not come close to eclipsing my favorite Lamb work _I Know This Much is True_, it is far superior to about 99% of what's on the shelves in bookstores. Lamb stayed with some of his tried-and-true themes and tools: family histories, mental illnesses, a flawed but likable narrator, etc. This book was a little different in a few ways that I liked, but had some reservations about.
First, his flawed everyman lit teacher working out his modern-day problems by examining ancient mythology could have been written by Tom Wolfe (that's a compliment to Wally Lamb), although Wolfe would have carried the theme through the novel while Lamb brought it in near the end.
Secondly, there were a couple of parts that jarred me out of the "world within the book". A minor offense was the interview relaying the history behind Rheingold beer. Instead of being fully ensconced in the conversation, I found myself thrust outside the book and wondering if Mr. Lamb took an interesting tour of a brewery he was dying to tell us about. It uncharacteristically did not fit. The main problem was the modern day tragedies used.
In the afterword, Lamb addresses his use of real life tragedies and refers to fictional approximations as "taking the safer and more conventional novelist's approach". I found that statement a little haughty, especially as the pages and pages of text, facts, and true to life media coverage of the Columbine school shooting brought me out of the book and interrupted my reading experience. It was as though I had put down my Wally Lamb book and picked up Time Magazine from 1999, read 15 pages, and picked back up the Wally Lamb.
Not only did the nonfiction events distract me from the prose, but I couldn't help but feel a bit irked that someone who watched Columbine unfold on television from a Boston hotel room took so much ownership of the event. It felt as awkward to me as when I found out a relative in middle Ohio who knew no victims of 9-11 had begun collecting the various plates, coins, etc. that people used to profit from the event. I couldn't help but feel the families of the dead and maimed would not be especially happy to have an author writing a fictional teen and school nurse into their very real tragedy.
But what do I know? I watched the event on a television from a dorm room at Appalachian State U. His use of characters escaping Hurricane Katrina seemed less of an offense. My personal issue with the true life stories was that it distracted me and took me out of the magic of being "in" the story. Maybe I'm guilty of trying to be an escapist - picking up a novel and not thinking about the Iraq War or school shootings.
The overall story was enthralling and the portions about the women's prison - current day or the historical background provided through letters from the main character's ancestors, were the most interesting. Lamb always writes realistically and sympathetically of mental illness, and his depiction of PTSD was no different. I found myself tiring of Maureen and wishing for escape - not from the book, but FOR Caelum, and realized how honest the writing must have been to cause that.
For fans of Lamb, I'd definitely recommend the book, but if you're only going to read one Lamb, skip this and head to _I Know This Much is True_ or _She's Come Undone_, both of which are superb reads. That being said, if Lamb published another book tomorrow, I'd be first in line to purchase it. His characters are flawed and real - uncomfortable to read at their worst points, but you still root for them and love them. Just like real friends and family. No matter the story, I think a Wally Lamb book will always be a good bet.
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: The Hours This Book Wasted
Summary: 2 Stars
I have been an enormous Wally Lamb fan over the last decade. I have been waiting for his third novel since 1997 when I was a freshman in high school. I am currently 28 to put it into perspective. I loved SCU and IKTMIT, but this novel feels like an after thought of his previous work. The story is contrived and rambles on for endless pages. It was impossible to put his past novels down, but I found myself anxious to stop reading. It was too painful for me, a woman, who attended high school during the Columbine shootings. I enrolled in the University of Colorado in 2000 and came face to face with many of the victims of Columbine. I can't imagine any of them are clamoring to read this novel. I feel sorry for Mr. Lamb during the afterword. He basically admits this novel as a failure in comparison to his past work, but hopes his coattails from the past two novels exonerate him from publishing this tome. He masks his writers block by limping through real life events that forever crippled a generation and a nation. I feel Mr. Lamb wronged the victims, my friends, by exploiting their story so he had a plot line. Mr. Lamb wrongly believes that this novel is the cure or an aid offered for our recovery. I appreciate his effort to help the victims he describes, but he doesn't get that his readership is reading his novels for entertainment and an escape from the reality of current events. We don't read to have it shoved in our faces. This novel made me feel some PTSD. I thought about the day in school we heard the announcement over the P.A. about Columbine and the day my college roommate ripped me out of bed at 7:15 a.m. screaming "New York is being bombed". I felt damaged by this novel as I read the highly predictable last line, it made me laugh a little bit at the ridiculousness melodrama Mr. Lamb published for the survivors of my generation lost to rage, war, natural disasters, and terrorism. Mr. Lamb pretends to understand my generation, but falls short of being able to develop integral characters of my generation such as Velvet, Morgan, and Jesse.
Also a major letdown is Mr. Lamb's need to undermine the wonderfully vague endings of his first two novels by intertwining his past main characters into Caelum's life. He casts them as supporting characters in his latest novel, but if you have read their individual stories you can't ignore the white elephant on the pages. I used to sit and think about what became of those characters and as much as it was frustrating it was amazing that Lamb let the reader be in charge of his extremely raw cThe Hour I First Believed: A Novel (P.S.)haracters future. It was their vulnerability that made them beloved and relatable. He undermines his reader and spells out the life lesson at the end of THIFB. Have we not learned to think for ourselves? I can't fathom why he would destroy his stellar reputation on a piece of garbage like this. Caelum is the afterbirth of Dominick Birdsey and all the material that went unused in IKTMIT. Mr. Lamb, I know you are capable of much greater work! Make sure you read this book when you are in a stable and confident frame of mind or you might find yourself way in over your head trying to cope with the vast array of emotional battles Mr. Lamb highlights.
If you are a Lamb fan I suggest you save $29.95, and don't hold your breath for a fourth novel anytime soon. He has cracked under the pressure of his editor, publisher, and readership. I fear his best writing days are behind him. He can't outshine his past talent.
Book Review: The Hour I First Believed disappoints...
Summary: 3 Stars
I have been a long time fan of Wally Lamb and have been eagerly awaiting his new novel like most of his fans. I have to say that Wally Lamb's new novel "The Hour I First Believed" is an ambitious novel that loses its path midway. I could not even finish this novel and finally had enough about page 500.
Pros:
1) I enjoyed the 1st half of the book. The amount of research that he did about Columbine was exhaustive and it paid off in his descriptions of the events of this tragedy and its aftermath in the lives of those there that day who died and lived, their families, the community, and the country as a whole. Maureen and Caelum both worked at the school. Caelum was an English teacher and Maureen was one of the school nurses. Maureen was a tragic character who survived that day but has trouble with post traumatic stress disorder and living in the aftermath. She never really copes with this. It is like there was a day before Columbine and after Columbine. Caelum tries to help her but it is like she is trapped in her own little hell that he can't break through to rescue her from it. He feels guilty that he wasn't there when it happened because he was in CT to visit a sick aunt who later dies while he was there. Maureen wasn't supposed to be anywhere near where the tragedy but she was helping a troubled student and was in the library at the time of the shooting.
2) He seems to follow a timeline by pointing out important things that happened along the way starting with Columbine and weaving through 9/11, the Iraq war, the Bush presidency,etc. These events all have significance in the lives of the characters and the world they lived in at a particular time. I could relate because I also lived through these same times.
Cons:
1)As much as I loved the 1st half of the book, the second half dragged on and on and on... It pretty much went downhill after Caelum and Maureen moved back to CT from CO. It went from being focused on Maureen to focusing on Caelum and his past. I would have liked to explore Maureen's mind more as see dealt with the aftermath of her life post-Columbine.
2)This book could have a been a lot shorter maybe like 400-500 pages not over the 700 that it actually is. I found the letters/journal entries from Caelum's ancestors had some relevance but they were 15 or more pages each and there were 2 that I read. The background of Caelum and his childhood is relevant, but could have been condensced as well. These events as well as others could have been shorter and still have gotten their point across.
3) There were times that I would start a chapter and be asking myself how does this relate to the story at hand. It eventually would be explained but this information could have been condenced into a shorter version as well and placed where the reader could best see the relevance. I don't know why you would introduce something or some new character in the beginning of a new chapter when he could have set this up as the situation evolved.
I have to say this has been one of the few books that I haven't been able to get all the way through. I still give it three stars for being ambitious and the desciption of the events of Columbine. I wish I could say more about this book that is favorable but I can't. If you want to read Wally Lamb at his best, I would recommend reading his first two novels, She's Come Undone and This Much I know is true.
Book Review: Competently written and topical
Summary: 4 Stars
Nothing comes easily to Caelum Quirk, the narrator and protagonist of this 752-page novel. He's 47, teaching English at a high school in Colorado where his third wife, Maureen, is a part-time nurse. In the evenings he drinks, shares lists of the greatest rock songs of all time with like-minded guys via the Internet, and ignores his wife's signals that she needs him, despite the promises he made during couples counseling years ago. The only family he has left, an Aunt Lolly in Connecticut, phones him every Sunday night to vent about the state of the world in general and the prison down the road in particular --- a women's prison founded by Caelum's good-intentioned and compassionate great-grandmother, now run by the state, which has drained all the dignity right out of it.
When Lolly suffers a stroke, Caelum flies back to the family home in Connecticut. And the next day at the high school where he teaches, which is named Columbine, his wife spends hours cowering in a cupboard in the library while Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris kill 13 of their fellow students and then themselves.
After the massacre, Maureen suffers from post-traumatic stress syndrome and gets hooked on downers. Caelum becomes more and more frustrated, both trying to help her and trying to understand how a monstrosity like Columbine could happen. "There is no mysterious Master Planner, no one up there who can see the big picture --- the order in the disorder. Religion's just a well-oiled profit-driven denial of the randomness of it all." He knew the boys and keeps second-guessing himself: What if he had called them on some of their strange remarks, or taken more notice of a disturbing essay?
Many pages of this novel are consumed by journal entries of these real-life boys and by a minute-by-minute reconstruction of the actual rampage, so if you're interested in studying that gruesome history, this is a good resource. Soon Lolly dies from her stroke, and the couple decides to move back to Connecticut to make a fresh start away from all the triggers that plague Maureen, who is sullen, listless, defensive and strung out.
But back in the family farmhouse, Caelum confronts the holes in his own personal narrative. Maureen makes enough progress to go back to work at a nursing home, but is not quite well enough to resist sneaking pills from the dispensary. Thus begins a second, smaller tragedy, another stage for the whole chaos theory to be resurrected, through Caelum's self-discovery and eventual embrace of sobriety and redemption. Much of the self-discovery comes through old family letters and journals retrieved and catalogued by the female half of a couple of Katrina victims who find their way north, who just happens to be kind of hot and working on her degree in Women's Studies. (Nearly 50 pages of her thesis, featuring Caelum's forebears, are included in this novel, which is nothing if not thorough.) By that time, Maureen is conveniently in the prison started by Caelum's great-grandmother, so Caelum soon has another thing to beat himself up about: making this young lady's husband a cuckold.
I was impressed by Wally Lamb's earlier work, SHE'S COME UNDONE, and this novel is also competently written and topical. Things perked up for me in chapter four, written in the very credible and interesting voice of the boy Caelum. I wanted to hear more of that voice, but never did.
--- Reviewed by Eileen Zimmerman Nicol