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: A-mazing
Summary: 5 Stars
I really enjoyed this book, although it seemed at times like the author was using the same ingredients bake a slightly different dessert. All the elements of "I Know This Much Is True," are here. A protagonist who has anger management issues and a troubled marriage? Check. Abusive parents and shameful family secrets? Check. An indictment of the prison system on its inhabitants' mental health. A backstory that takes hundreds of pages and involves a smorgasbord of obscure, seemingly irrelevant details, plus a history lesson? Check. And two of the protagonists from previous books (Dominck Birdsey and Dolores Price) make a cameo here. Dominick and his brother's therapist also has a role.
Plot: Caelum Quirk and his wife Maureen are a teacher and a nurse respectively at Columbine High School (yes, that Columbine High School). During the infamous school shooting, Caelum is fortunate enough to be away, but Maureen is forced to hide while it unfolds. Most of the book takes place during the aftermath, exploring how post-traumatic stress affects both the survivor and her family. However, eventually, Maureen and her problems disappear (kind of like Thomas' in "I Know This Much is True), and the rest of the book is devoted to Caelum's family history. Real life figures, such as authors and suffragettes interact with the fictional cast.
My only real quibble with the book is that after the focus shifted from Maureen, I kept wondering about her and was only half-interested in the rest of Caelum's family history. After all, she was the one who'd survived Columbine and the one of the most proactive characters who remained alive throughout the entire book. Also, Caelum declares that he's gotten obsessed with the Columbine killers but after a chapter, that seemed to have vanished, odd considering how traumatized his wife was. The book didn't really grapple with the question of what makes a teen commit a mass crime, except to say that bullying is bad. In short, I kept expecting the book to take a direction it didn't.
Book Review: Lost and wasted
Summary: 2 Stars
When I was in high school, there was a tradition that every year for the variety show, our neighboring school's AP Calculus class sang this song that included the line, "We are poor little lambs who have lost our way, bah, bah, bah." Poor Wally Lamb has lost his way, and the book is blah, blah, blah.
I bought "She's Come Undone" on a whim several years ago, knowing almost nothing about it, and went on to read it at least twelve times. When "I Know This Much Is True" was published, I borrowed a copy from my mother's friend that she finally told me I could keep because I kept reading it over and over. When this book was published, I went to see Wally Lamb read from it and got my copy signed. That was lots of fun. Reading the book was a huge disappointment.
"The Hour I First Believed" reads almost like someone's parody of Lamb's first two novels - we've got destructive marriages, dead babies, sexual abuse, therapy, the secrets of an ancestor's past, and how recent American history has affected the main character. In SCU and IKTMIT, Lamb did a fantastic job of using these elements because at their core, the novels were Dolores's story and Dominick's story, respectively. This book's story is the story of how Wally Lamb was under a lot of pressure to produce his next book. It's disjointed, disconnected, and Caelum is a flat-out obnoxious and dislikable character. While Dolores and Dominick weren't always people you'd exactly choose as friends, it wasn't hard to see their pain and their essential humanity. Caelum has no essential humanity because Lamb hasn't written him well enough for him to seem real.
I gave this book two stars instead of one because there are a few sections that might have made terrific short stories. It's clear Wally Lamb is still a talented writer with a lot of stories in him, but I think that in the long run, this book will be to Wally Lamb what "Troilus and Cressida" is to Shakespeare. "Troilus and Cressida", while read in college Shakespeare classes devoted to examining every aspect of Shakespeare's work, is no one's favorite Shakespeare play and is rarely performed because it has no sympathetic characters and falls flat emotionally.
Book Review: Would you like a story with the pushy political views?
Summary: 2 Stars
I can take an author's political innuendo here and there in a fiction story. I can enjoy it even (even if its something I disagree with). But Wally Lamb certainly goes over the line in this novel. Just like the title says - Would you like a story with the pushy political views? It seems less of a well thought out fiction novel that makes you really think than a vessel for pushing political views on people and making them think they're one of the "stupid" ones (see the character Alpho who isn't that bright and voted for Bush, but we love him anyway) if they don't agree. Besides the pushy political views (like I said, I can deal with that in a really good novel, especially if the author's writing is so good it can actually make you see where they're coming from), this novel was LONG, drawn out, boring and sometimes for 20-50 pages IRRELEVANT to the story, or should I say stories. There are multiple ones. And they all don't seem to tie together quite the way they should. If you're looking for a history lesson on things that are fictitious or even things that really existed, but the history for this story was totally made up, read this book. I'd say a good 1/3 of it is just that. Irrelevant "history" lessons to fit the story. I was very disappointed in this work, having absolutely loved "She's Come Undone" and "I Know This Much is True". I was offended at times - no not at the gruesome things that sometimes are portrayed in this book, but at the stigma's Mr. Lamb seems to be attaching through his not so likable character - Caelum. For instance - it is conveyed more than a few times that combat vets from the Civil War and on (for this piece) are no more than poor suckers duped by their own greedy government. And may I add, CRAZY, unstable PTSD ones at that. Lest us not forget that, as Mr. Kanye West put it, George Bush hates black people. Oh yeah, he doesn't have to say that exact quote, but its in there.
Whether or not your political views are to the left or to the right, I would not recommend this novel. It needs some SERIOUS editing and the whole story could probably be summed up in 300 pages or so. Not 700+. Very disappointed, Mr. Lamb.
Book Review: A Disappointment
Summary: 2 Stars
It's hard what to make of Wally Lamb's big new book. It has, at its heart, a tale of devastation, pseudo-Greek tragedy. The book's conceit, the senseless day of slaughter at Columbine High School in Littleton Colorado in the late 90s by two disaffected teens should be what this book is about. Indeed, we are given a sort of TV view of the masacre, and the book pays it a lot of attention. For a while.
But ultimately, Columbine remains unexamined. Instead, this weighty tome rambles through lots and lots of what turns out to be frustratingly tedious Family History, which may be fascinating to our protagonist, to me sounds like trying real hard to make this book into what it cannot be, but is anyway: a Great Big Novel.
I really liked quite a bit of the buildup to the tragedy, the imperfect veil of tears that entwines itself into every endeavor, every feeling. The story of the marriage might have been the better counterpoint, but it gets swallowed up in the novel's own self destruction. Slowly but surely, the central terrible act of the book is pulled ever so slightly off the stage. A central character's reaction to that tragedy gets trivialized into boring jailhouse conversations.
But then it turned into a (self-serving) "Quest" novel, and it fell apart. This might have been a lean nouvelle, except Mr Lamb is not known for writing short novels. If this ever makes it to movie form, I would seriously consider dropping the whole subplot about 19th century answers and secrets revealed that mean everything to some character, but to the reader, not much. Problems are too acute and then too easily solved so as to get on with things. Nothing so illustrates this as the book's semi-resolution into Alcoholics Anonymous orthodoxy: Everything is exactly the way it's supposed to be.
I think the family story is one that seems important to the author, but the Columbine massacre resists being taken in by the family reveltions of an ultimately not very interesting guy (our protagonist) and the weaving of the two stories fails to persuade. I cannot recommend spending money on this book.
Book Review: Not as Good as the First Two Novels, but...
Summary: 4 Stars
I waited around for a very long time for this novel. She's Come Undone is my absolute favorite contemporary work; I have read it five times, and in my opinion, there is no better modern character than Dolores Price. That being said, I Know This Much Is True was also nothing short of amazing.
Don't get me wrong, I thoroughly enjoyed this novel, but it does not quite add up to the talent of the first two. Lamb has always had a knack for writing a story within a story, but in The Hour I First Believed, those stories come off as separate and not always intrinsic to one another. On occasion, it has the tendency to ramble on, and at times, I was not quite sure where Lamb was going. Furthermore, while the beginning of the book comes off like gangbusters, it decidedly "comes undone" two thirds in. I can almost pinpoint the spot where Lamb becomes preoccupied...like he is simply desperate to finish (deadlines ARE a bitch).
Without being a spoiler, he also makes some "abrupt" choices for the ending that felt a little "off." The good thing is, if you ARE a diehard Lamb fan, like myself, you will enjoy the visitation of previous characters and themes throughout. For instance, the Birdsey twins (of I Know This Much Is True) play a small role...and a character named Dolores Kitchen shows up briefly, and I cannot help but think she was once "Dolores Price" (from She's Come Undone). Lamb also wrote a book on his experiences teaching female inmates in a maximum security prison...this idea plays a huge role in the new book.
Last but not least, Caelum Quirk, the main character, is fantastic (the last name is quite fitting, let me assure you). He has all the sarcasm and self-deprecation found in Lamb's other great characters.
While I feel the book fell a little short of its predecessors, I still liked it very much and look forward to Lamb's next work with enthusiasm. He knows how to write a good epic novel.
Lastly, if you are thinking that this novel is going to be entirely about Columbine as seems to be suggested by the description, you will be sorely disappointed, it is merely one topic among many.