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: Long. Preachy. Disapointing.
Summary: 3 Stars
Being a huge fan of this writer, the wait for this novel was long and painful. But, like everyone else, I waited patiently and the day finally came for a new Wally Lamb fix. Mine came the day after Thanksgiving when I happily purchased this 750 page fix. I sat down, and read the first 100 pages the same day.
The story started off truly engaging. Sure, the characters weren't especially sympathetic or likeable, but WL other books started out the same way. The Columbine section was very well written and heartbreaking for all involved, even the fictional characters. Then the story took what I thought to be a very strange turn but I'll leave out the details and let the individual readers decide.
But, in general, I found the remainder of the book preachy, over the top, and dull. Mr. Lamb seemed to take the Columbine tragedy and milk it for all it was worth. And considering the main character was not even present, and only indirectly involved in the Columbine tragedy, it was almost to the point of being exploitive, in my opinion. The whole theme began to turn me off rather than sympathize with the characters and engage me further into the story. Then, Mr. Lamb throws in the other tragedies that have happened in the country over the past 10 years in an exploitive manner as well--all while not even attempting to hide his own particular leanings, further alienating me from the story.
I plowed through, skipped nothing, hoping for the usual bright spot that happens in Mr. Lamb's novels. I was exhausted and happy I was done. I read She's Come Undone and I Know This Much is True probably a combined dozen times, never tiring of either. This won't happen with The Hour I First Believed.
I didn't care for the main character, Caelum, but this is not a requirement for me. However, Caelum Quirk seemed exceptionally shallow and self centered. This made it even more unbelievable when Caelum took in a couple rendered homeless due to Katrina. A person such as Caelum Quirk never would have done this (personally, I don't think most people with common sense would), thus making this twist seem even more exploitive and unbelievable. I felt Mr. Lamb was just milking another tragedy and this whole theme could have been skipped and nothing would have been missed. I'm had no sympathy for Caelum's wife, Maureen. I'm actually unsure what the point of her character was either. In hindsight, it almost seems she was "thrown in" to keep the Columbine theme going.
Just some advice in case you're reading this to help make a decision to take on this tome on or not. I have never read the non-fiction books Mr. Lamb was involved in. The subject matter of imprisoned women held no appeal to me. Had I known this theme was a major one in The Hour I First Believe, I'm not sure I would have been interested. I just wish I would have known this before I committed the time and money into the hardcover, so I thought it deserved to be shared.
All of this said, I am giving this 3 stars for the following reason: true to Wally Lamb form, with a couple of exceptions, the character development and detail was perfection. I found the historical documents and people portrayed fascinating, although this whole theme struck me as very unoriginal since Mr. Lamb used it before. The book was very well researched and written. It just happened to not be my favorite.
Book Review: Failed on a lot of levels
Summary: 2 Stars
First off, the editors for this book should be fired. I didn't find as many mistakes as in some, but come on...you can't get the main character's name right?
Now, as to the story itself: It started off just fine. It was interesting, if a bit slow. The in-depth look at how those two boys affected the lives of so many was fascinating. I came to see that and it's many layers in a whole new light. I found myself wishing that that had gone even further. Caelum mentions several times that he'd had those boys' brothers in class. How much better would this novel have been if they'd explored that and how loving someone who can do something so monstrous can effect the rest of your life? It could easily have been compared to Mo and her killing of Morgan Seaberry, Janis and her abortion, his great-grandmother and Pansy/Lillian...but the book doesn't go there.
Instead, characters that seem pivotal become incidental. Maybe that's how life goes, but there are so many things that are just dropped. What happened to Lindsay? Where's Velvet's story? His father's? His "step-"mother's? What happens to Beena? He tells Mo he goes to see her, but you don't know how those meetings go. Before they were essential turning points, now they're mentioned in passing?
The thing that really killed it for me...the blast to the past. I could have taken some off it. The introspective look at the family history...to a point. But why so much? Why Coconut Grove? Why the interview with the old man who drove Jinx? So much of that was long and drawn out and not nicely linked to the rest of the story or even well wrapped. Not that the bits were totally useless because they conveyed information...but it was dreadful getting to and through that information.
It's not that I didn't like the story or the message it conveyed. I just would have like it to be more succinct. The unnecessary should have been cut, other paths should have been explored, and loose threads should have been recaptured and fitted to the story....unless Lamb's whole point was to convey chaos theory in his writing style itself. In which case, it's a stunning success!
So, now I've read three Wally Lamb novels. I read "I Know this Much is True" first and loved it so much that I sought out "She's Come Undone" and didn't care for it at all. This one, I would rank in between the two. For the record, I love the titles on all...very fitting.
Also, I'm a rather conservative person and I appreciated the viewpoints in this latest novel, but, at the same time, it was almost overwhelming and distracting. I'd have liked to have seen some counter to this rather than to have all bash conservative values. While I have no idea what Lamb's personal views are, reading it, I felt that I was expected to either agree or be chastised for my beliefs. And in that way, I felt drawn into this novel in a way that I hadn't anticipated, but that I respect and find myself wondering, how? How did I become so engaged in thought (and maybe with the author?) through characters that I didn't particularly like in this fictional piece? I couldn't sleep after finishing it, felt compelled to comment, and I want to discuss it with others... Therein lies my fascination with Wally Lamb. (man, I miss those college lit classes!)
Book Review: The Great American Novel?
Summary: 2 Stars
Lamb's book was given to me as a Chirstmas gift, along with a pile of other books. This tome, edging at over 700 pages, was the last of them that I got to. Unfortunately, I wish I never got to it. This book makes me weep of the status of the American novel.
Let's start with one of the most glaring examples-- the characters in this book are each unlikeable.A quick recap of the main cast: Calem, the narcissistic, pompous, holier than thou drunk high school teacher; Mo, his high school, drug addicted, nurse wife; Velvet, their quasi adopted daughter who happens to be one of his students. From there, the reader is introduced to a rotating cast of characters whose purposes are to simply keep the plot moving, rather than actually add anything: Moze, the entire L-women, Alfonso, Dr. Patel, Poppy... the list can go on and on, literally. These characters are merely single dimensional cut outs so that the main characters can complain to.
Moving on to the structure-- or, a lack thereof. This novel meanders for the length of entire other novels; a bloated mess of too many unnecessary plots, unnecessary tangents, unnecessary rants (apperantly, no matter what, it's President Bush's fault) unnecessary characters, unnecessary everything. The sturcutre is largly unfocused- I'm not sure if we are suppose to identify with Calem, or Mo; she has the more interesting story, but is turned into a shadow character. After the Columbine incident, the book loses it's entire focus, turning into a literary exploitation hodge-podge of American tragedies. It's one thing after another after another after another than destorys this man's life, to the point that the books resembles a Buster Keaton fkilm.
Finally, the plot-- what plot? The reader follows the this couple as their life falls apart. The over all focus is American tragedy, though it claims to focus on Columbine, it really is a superficial examination of violence as a catalyst for motivation, or lack of, but I feel that analysis may be giving too much credit to Lamb's writing prowless. It's much like "Great Expectations" in that everything is rather coincidental and falls neatly into place, rather than let the characters breathe. Mo's prison fate is a complete pathetic cop out, and Calem's sudden conversion to hope, despite EVERYTHING that happens to him for 700+ pages, rings false. This books needs to shed half it's length.
Finally, the length-- Literally, you can read the first 150 pages, skip 200 pages, skim the final 150, and not miss a thing.
The comparisons that some have made to the Russian novel is especially troublesom. I ask this as a literary person, a reader and a lover of literature: Is American literature so pathetic that we essentially use a novel of consiberable length as a justifiable comparison to the Russian Novel? This books lacks anything that would make it anything remotely like the Russians- there is no pathss, no understanding, no ambiguity, no understanding of humanity, no word play, only nothing.
For this, I weep for the American novel.
Book Review: Order - inciting disturbance - CHAOS - order restored
Summary: 4 Stars
Wally Lamb provides an afterward to this novel, explaining where he was coming from: "Along the way to discovering Caelum Quirk's story, I, too, wandered down corridors baffling and unfamiliar, investigating such topics as the invisible pull of ancestry, chaos-complexity theory, and
spirituality . . ."
The chaos theory thread deals mostly with The Columbine massacre. Caelum's wife was a school nurse at Columbine and was in the library when Klebold and Harris began murdering students and staff. She suffers post-traumatic stress as a result and soon becomes addicted to anti-depressants. Caelum was away attending his aunt's funeral at the time and he rushes back to be with her. They move back to Connecticut shortly afterwards. Maureen is Caelum's third wife. He has not forgiven her for cheating on him with another man. He hasn't forgiven his father (who also coincidentally suffered from PTS) or his relatives for lying to him about who his mother was.
The second thread, the invisible pull of ancestry deals with the women's prison his aunt worked at as a prison guard. Lamb (who taught creative writing at a woman's prison) creates a whole world in respect to this place. Caelum's great-grandmother was a Quaker activist who worked as a nurse during the civil war, but her life-time ambition was to create a women's prison where women criminals were treated with dignity. Lolly, Caelum's aunt, saves most of Lizzy Popper's papers and letters and we get to read some of them when Caelum takes in a refugee from the Katrina disaster who uses Lizzy's papers as her dissertation for a Women's Studies degree.
The third thread, spirituality is a little harder to pin down. Caelum doesn't have a whole lot of patience with organized religion, but he knows there's something out there. His main task is to work on forgiveness, and he eventually does this through Alcoholic's Anonymous.
At first the book is a little hard to get into. Caelum isn't that likable. He assaults his wife's former lover. He cheats on her. He treats Ulysses, his father's Korean War buddy, like dirt, and he's awfully hard on one of his former students who forms an attachment with Maureen. I was hooked when Lamb introduced Velvet Hoon, an EBD student Caelum worked with at Columbine who was also in the library when the massacre went down. She shaves her head and dyes it blue when it grows out. She's an excellent writer but lets Caelum down eventually. She ultimately serves as a conduit for redemption for Caelum, kind of surprising since she's such a pain in the butt. Like SHE'S COME UNDONE and I KNOW THIS MUCH IS TRUE, I did not want to see this book end. I could've read another 740 pages, and Lamb could have written them. My one problem with the book was Lamb's afterward. Why was it necessary for him to tell us how he came to write the book? There's an important writer's proviso most of us have to learn the hard way: Resist the urge to explain. Lamb should've known better.
Book Review: A beautiful work of fiction, based upon much that we know is true
Summary: 4 Stars
I am a great fan of Wally Lamb's, who I believe writes with such deep feeling for his subjects and with such intensity that it is hard to step away from his stories unaffected. When I first read "She's Come Undone" I was convinced that the author had to be a female -- how else could he so fully understand and write about the female psyche? After several readings, I still find it hard to believe that a man wrote such a deeply personal story about a woman and her struggle to find happiness.
I cannot really do this latest novel justice in a brief review. It is at once beautiful, poetic, sadly tragic, complex and strangely hopeful. The story line is so complex and the telling so replete with wonderful, human characters that it is not easily summarized or encapsulated. It is well worth the commitment required to finish reading it, even though it does contain some lengthy digressions into historical matters that seem unnecessary.
This novel tells an amazing story; what makes it compelling for me is that it draws upon modern day events so strongly. While the story starts with the Columbine killings, it also draws story elements from Hurricane Katrina, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and 9/11. The book is about many things, but the theme that comes through most strongly for me is the nature and extent of the collateral damage caused to innocent victims of evil and violence.
I didn't think I would make it through another depressing account of Columbine, and its awful legacy. But this book was less a tale of the specifics of that tragedy, as it was a story of the damage done to one it's victims, Maureen Quirk, a survivor of the carnage in that high school library, and her husband Caelum, who was not even in Colorado that day. We are given a very real description of the nature of post traumatic stress disorder and its impact on those who are unable to overcome it. Maureen and Caelum struggle mightily to overcome her demons, eventually moving out of Colorado to Caelum's recently inherited family farm in Connecticut.
At some point, though, the story moves away from Maureen's struggles to focus more upon those of her husband. I found this turn of events a bit unsettling, but in the end, I realized that the central story had always been about this truly secondary victim. Caelum's journey into his fascinating family's past, including the damage wreaked by the Civil War, is one that is replete with fascinating discoveries. Through all of this narrative, the author continuously reminds us of the unnecessary damage caused by violence, war, evil, hatred and meanness.
In the end, the author leaves us with the lovely ambiguity of knowing that Caelum comes to believe in something, you just cannot be sure what it is. As with many great novels, it almost doesn't matter what happens in the end -- it was the path taken that provides the truly satisfying experience.