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: I Believe in Wally Lamb!
Summary: 5 Stars
"The Hour I First Believed" was such a treat; at 740 pages I still wasn't ready for it to end. Sure there is stuff that an editor could have cut out and the story wouldn't have suffered....but the NOVEL would have. Lamb is particularly good at the "story within the story" which he also applied in "I Know This Much Is True". (I particularly enjoyed the epic and amusing saga of the origins of Rheingold Beer.) Some critics have found fault with the length of the novel and the round-about way that the plot develops and the story unfolds. They call the diversions "tangents" with a negative connotation, but for me, it was all a wonderful part of the rich tapestry of the novel. My favorite "big books" always contain diverging and merging rivers of side stories, plots and illuminating flashbacks. Wally Lamb is like Charles Dickens, Pat Conroy and Richard Russo in that way. Devote a little time to this novel and you won't be disappointed.
In this book, Wally Lamb has created a wonderful historical novel. Sure it's recent history - the late 20th and early 21st centuries - but no less historical just because we remember it. He's covered the Love Bug, Columbine, Katrina...he even flashes back to mid 20th century and the Cocoanut [sic] Grove fire; all catastrophes of one sort or another, but isn't it by the catastrophes that we divide up our history?
Another thing Lamb is good at is creating credible characters. This novel's protagonist, Caelum Quirk, is a bit of a jerk, and his wife, Maureen, is more than a little irritating...just like real people. Even when we don't agree with the character's actions, we nevertheless understand their motivations, thanks to Lamb's writing talent.
It took Lamb almost 10 years to complete this novel and it is apparent that he lovingly and painstakingly weighed every choice he made here. "The Hour I First Believed" is worth the wait.
Book Review: I Know This Much ISN'T True
Summary: 2 Stars
Regrettably, I must agree with the other reviewers who were disappointed in this book. I, too, was a fan of Mr. Lamb's other books and was hoping to be as captivated by "The Hour I First Believed". Unfortunately, this book was an ambitious undertaking of a difficult subject in itself - the Columbine shootings - further complicated by the weaving of numerous sub-plots that ultimately eclipse what I thought was going to be the primary one. Like some other reviewers, I lost interest in the book mid-way through. The reasons for this are as varied as the stories attempting to be told: I felt no connection with any characters, with the temporary exception of the wife, Maureen ("Mo"); there were too many stories woven into one prompting me to lose interest in most of them; the chances of one character being the victim of so much mayhem and mystery would defy all odds which made it too far-fetched as to be believable (massacres, killings, death, disasters) and the shared conversational inflection of virtually all the characters...because the characters? In this novel? They all talk exactly like that. I understand people occasionally end their sentences as if they were questions while conversing, but the tendency of all characters to do so became cloying and distracting to me as a reader.
Rather than feeling reflective upon ending this book, I felt relieved. It was interesting to read bits and pieces about Columbine, a little less so about Katrina (primarily because I could not connect with the characters hailing from the region and found their coincidental teaming up with another disaster victim contrived), and progressively less so all the other sub-plots. I would, however, like to re-read "She's Come Undone" and "I Know This Much is True", both of which I own and remain on my office shelves, once I return this one to its place in the library.
Book Review: I Believe!
Summary: 4 Stars
I really liked Wally Lamb's other two books so I was anticipating a good read with this one and I got it.The story at first seems to be about the tragedy at Columbine but really it is about how a married couple deals with the fallout from the tragedy as well as other things that have affected their lives. Also the exploration of the family history of the main character takes up the latter half of the book. This may at times make it seem like HIFB is two separate stories rolled into one which can be weird for some.What I really liked about this book was that the characters were human and really believable. I didn't necessarily like Caelum Quirk or his reactions to some of the issues he deals with in the book but it is how I would imagine a real person would react.I loved how the book dealt with the PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder) issue. I have something similiar to PTSD so I was really skeptical about how accurately the author would portray the relationship between Caelum and Maureen after the Columbine fallout. I realize not all people will react the same but a lot of the symptoms are the same and Mr. Lamb nailed the struggles on that front. There were parts of the book where I felt the author had to have been standing in my living room observing me and my hubby before he wrote this book.The history of the Quirk family was interesting also but it was in this section that the story kind of got bogged down a bit. The author was laying the groundwork for this phase and it got a little less interesting but it did pick back up as the story got more involved.The story deals with heavy issues so it is probably not for someone who requires a happy ending to everything they read. It is rare that I retain much from a book for more than a day or two but this one stuck with me. Great book overall. I am looking forward to Mr. Lamb's next one.Book Review: A Truly Great, Totally Compelling, Rich, Complex Novel
Summary: 5 Stars
Caelum Quirk is 47 and teaching English at Columbine High School. He and Maureen (Mo) have moved there from Three Rivers, CT. Their reconciliation, following her affair with a co-worker, is still raw and difficult. He teaches English. She is one of the school nurses. The book begins:
"THEY WERE BOTH WORKING THEIR final shift at Blackjack Pizza that night, although nobody but the two of them realized it was that. Give them this much: they were talented secret-keepers.
Caelum knew both Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold from the preceding year, enough to visit with them when he stops by to pick up pizza on his way home. He reflects that Eric had some talent as a writer.
Four days later, as the slaughter proceeds around them, Mo and Velvet, a student she has tried to help, hide in the school library. Stranded in Connecticut, due to an emergency trip to see his dying aunt, Caelum watches the carnage on TV.
The story moves into a profound meditation on how the shooting could have been planned and executed and its affect on Maureen, Caelum, and the other survivors. Simultaneously, it dives deeply into history and parallels from earlier generations that contributed to who Caelum and Maureen have become and the struggles they still face.
Like the unforgettable heroine of "She's Come Undone," Velvet -- the student Maureen tried to help during the shootings -- is complex, damaged, and wonderfully resilient. A serially abused, blue-haired, talented 16-year-old, Velvet is so hostile and scared that she can't get her footing.
None of them can. But they don't stop trying, and growing, until they ...
For those who love real literature, I can't recommend this book too highly!
Book Review: YOU WILL NEED AMAZING GRACE TO FINISH THIS ONE
Summary: 2 Stars
Choosing to capitalize on almost every cataclysmic event that has occurred in the past twenty years, Wally Lamb has thrown everything from the Columbine Massacre and Hurricane Katrina victims to the war in Iraq and conditions in women's prisons into the rambling mess called The Hour I First Believed. And he doesn't stop there. He adds mental illness, alcoholism, infidelity, kidnapping, covert sexual abuse, suicide, drug addiction, and dead babies, as well as some letters and diaries that contain revelations about the ancestors of our protagonist, Caelum Quirk. Those revelations range from shocking to downright boring. To further disrupt the flow of his story, Lamb seems unable to control advancing his own political agenda by placing it in the mouths of his characters.
If this book suffers from anything, it is the lack of editing. Instead of telling us the tale of Maureen and Caelum and the traumatic effect of Columbine on their lives, we are submerged in a 725+ page quagmire of plots, divergent sub-plots and melodrama that leaves the reader feeling frustrated and easily able to relate to Maureen and her need for the prescription drugs that made her life bearable. Personally, I don't know if I could have taken one more detour to yet another disastrous event before I started popping a couple of Xanax.
Mr. Lamb has a definite talent for the written word and I had so enjoyed his previous books,(She's Come Undone and This Much I Know Is True) that perhaps my expectations concerning this novel were unrealistic and contributed to my disappointment with this offering. If this book was supposed to be profound and enlightening, it missed the mark. This was a tedious read and I would be hard pressed to recommend this book to anyone.