My Most Scathing Review Yet!!

The Hour I First Believed I Did Not Like This Book!!!

Like many of Wally Lamb's fans, I waited with great anticipation for this book to come out. I had read his two previous novels, She's Come Undone (just okay in my opinion) and I Know This Much Is True (a great read), and was wondering if this next one would put Lamb on the list as one of my admired authors. Based on I Know This Much Is True, I knew he had great potential to be added to a list that includes such esteemed authors as Pat Conroy and John Irving. Unfortunately, with this latest offering, Lamb does not make the cut. Not only does he not make the cut, but, after spending hours upon hours reading this book, I'm not even sure if I'd give him another chance. That's how much I did not like this book.

It all started with the writing which, in many places, can only be called "fractured". I found this kind of writing to be very disconcerting within the context of the story. Here are some examples and these are the actual sentences: Last night? I got up and started combing her hair. And here's another: A maintenance crew, from the looks of it, nine or ten women with shovels, hoes and hedge cutters. Now I ask you all....where is the verb in this last sentence? This went on and on throughout the entire book. Then, as if that wasn't bad enough, Lamb constantly repeats himself. He tells a story of Zinnia always hugging Caelum on page 124 and had already told the exact same story earlier in the book. This was done numerous times and it ultimately began to feel like deja vu.

As with many authors who write a great book and get much publicity for doing so (Oprah pick), it must be hard to pen that next book trying to make sure it lives up to the all the adulation the author received from his last book. I think the "Aftermath" section of this book explains this fear and Lamb's own trepidations in trying to come up with a "story". They latch onto something that "might" work and then weave other stories into it. In this case, the author has taken every tragedy imaginable....The Civil War, The Korean War, Columbine, 9/11, The War in Iraq, Katrina....and made it all part of this story. The end result is.....it doesn't work!!!!

In my opinion, one of the most important jobs of an author, especially an author who is asking his reader to invest hours and hours of their time on a 700+ page book, is to create characters and develop them in such a way that the reader feels invested. This is the story of forty-seven year old thrice married Caelum Quirk and his younger wife Maureen, who move to Columbine, Colorado after an unfortunate set of circumstances forces them to leave their home in Three Rivers, Connecticut. For as long as I can remember, I've always associated "Three Rivers" with the city of Pittsburgh. Let's face it, the Pittsburgh Pirates played in Three Rivers Stadium for thirty years. Pittsburgh is famous for its three waterways....the Monongahela, Allegheny, and Ohio Rivers. Yet Lamb has "his" Three Rivers located in Connecticut. I can't tell you how unsettling this was for me every time Three Rivers was mentioned. I had to keep reminding myself that they weren't in Pennsylvania but in Connecticut.

There wasn't one minute that I liked either Caelum or Maureen or any of the other myriad of characters who entered these pages. Since you know right away that they're moving to Columbine, you immediately know there are going to be characters there that you won't like either. Even though Maureen is in the school at the time of the shootings, I never felt any empathy for her even though she had been through a horrendous experience. And Maureen and Caelum's relationship was never developed enough for her own husband to feel the empathy Lamb is obviously expecting his reader to offer up.

This book will take the married couple from Connecticut to Colorado and back to Connecticut. It will also take the reader back in time as Caelum explores his heritage after finding some interesting items in his aunt's attic. As Caelum investigates his heritage, as a reader, I got confused keeping everyone straight. The reason for this is that Lamb has given everyone of the narrator's female relatives a name beginning with the letter "L". We have Lizzie, Lolly, Lydia and Lillian. After awhile, I didn't know who was who.

And to me the biggest mistake an author of fiction can make is inserting his own political beliefs into the novel. Once an author does this, whether I agree with his beliefs or not, I'm turned off. Richard North Patterson used to be one of my favorite authors but, with each book he wrote, he jammed his politics down my throat. I haven't read another book of his since. Unfortunately, Lamb has fallen into the same category with me. If he wants to be political, he should write some Op Ed pieces for the New York Times....not insert his views within the fictional pages of his book.

In closing, I don't know how so many reviewers can state that Wally Lamb is their favorite author before even reading this book. Their favorite author of what??? Two books?? (By the way, these last two fractured sentences are reminiscent of Lamb's writing if you're wondering why I did this). If I was going to claim that someone was my favorite author, I think I'd like to have read more than two of their works. I could say that Pat Conroy is a favorite author of mine as is John Irving and Joyce Carol Oates. Each of these authors has many, many books in their repertoire and I've read almost all of them.

I think that in the case of this book, I would have liked to have known the ending before reading the middle because it might have explained a lot and perhaps I might have enjoyed it more. I'm not sure. The jury is still out on Lamb as far as I'm concerned. He needs to come up with a much better book to seal his rank as an author whose books I must read.

And lastly (yes I'm almost done with this), I think this review is so scathing because I wanted to like this book. No, I take that back. I wanted to love this book. I wanted to love it as much as I loved I Know This Much Is True. And I didn't and I'm angry about that and, mostly, I'm so very disappointed.