The Hour I First Believed by Wally Lamb

The Hour I First Believed
by Wally Lamb
Pub. Date: November 2008
Genre: Fiction
740pp

Synopsis from BN.com:
Click here

Why I Picked It:
I loved Wally Lamb's first novel, She's Come Undone. I couldn't put it down and remember reaching the last page yearning for more. I Know This Much is True was so intense from the very beginning, I knew this was an author who's books I was going to read, no matter how long I needed to wait. I just didn't know I was going to have to wait TEN years for the next one. I do know this much. Wally Lamb hits a nerve and stays put, sucks you in with purposefully chosen language, and then the stories and characters, whether you love or hate them, won't let you go. This will not be the first fictionalized account of Columbine (or of a school just like it) that I've read. Nineteen Minutes by Jodi Picoult was the first, and honestly, as much as I've enjoyed other books she has written, that one didn't work for me. I am, however, looking forward to climbing onto Mr. Lamb's 740 page emotional roller coaster account of Columbine, 9/11, Hurricane Katrina, etc. as this one apparently includes them all.

My Review:
There is no simple way to dive into a Wally Lamb novel. You will be in for an emotional ride that stirs your life view, at times making you laugh, other times overcome by tears and anger. It's like having a complete brain implant. You are no longer living your own life; you are now the character. Feeling, seeing, saying, touching a strangely personal, heart rending existence as it unfolds. The descriptiveness (nothing picturesque like reading Charles Frazier) is in your face, just like you experience your own day to day. (And no offense to you, Mr. Frazier, but I don't spend a lot of time making associations between diaper changes or my aggravation that my home phone is currently not taking incoming calls to the rhythms of nature and the position of the sun and the moon.) Wow. I just relived my frustration with Cold Mountain in my Wally Lamb review. Want to talk about completely foreign literature circles - stuffy vs. confounding.

Here's a perfect example of Wally Lamb's main character Caelum Quirk. (I love this name by the way. I did a Google search for the meaning of Caelum. It's a constellation said to resemble a chisel. Quirk has several meanings, but I like these two: An unpredictable or unaccountable act or event, or an equivocation. Read the book and then sit with that.)

Here's the quote: "After I had ejaculated the anger out of me, I lay there with my puddle of regret." Yeah. Caelum is no sugar coated character. He is raw. He is wounded. He is angry. And he is R-E-A-L. It took me about 50 pages or so to accept that while I wasn't at all attracted to the man that Caelum is, I could certainly understand him. So I allowed Mr. Lamb to envelope me completely into his life.

It begins in Littleton, Colorado, just before the horrific Columbine High School shootings. Transplants you back to Caelum's family farm in Connecticut where you are further immersed in generations of family history as he and his wife Maureen (the Columbine school nurse who was in the library as the shootings occurred) try to move forward. Tragedy at every turn. But isn't that exactly real life?

Perfect. Profound. Poetic. Personal. Caelum's quest becomes your own. I'll be sitting with this one for a while.