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The Hour I First Believed: A Novel (P.S.) |
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Amazon Sales Rank: 1026
Publication Date: 2009-08-01
Release Date: 2009-08-04
Publisher: Harper Perennial
ISBN: 0060988436
Type: Paperback
Number Of Pages: 768
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When high school teacher Caelum Quirk and his wife, Maureen, a school nurse, move to Littleton, Colorado, they both get jobs at Columbine High School. In April 1999, while Caelum is away, Maureen finds herself in the library at Columbine, cowering in a cabinet and expecting to be killed. Miraculously, she survives, but at a cost: she is unable to recover from the trauma. When Caelum and Maureen flee to an illusion of safety on the Quirk family's Connecticut farm, they discover that the effects of chaos are not easily put right, and further tragedy ensues.
Average Rating: 
Review: 2009-11-19
Disappointed.
I picked up this book because I really liked Wally Lamb's other books. This one, however, I did not enjoy. There were far too many subplots in it, the characters were not sympathetic at all, especially considering the main story of the Columbine school shooting. At the beginning of the book, I thought that Lamb was telling Maureen's story after surviving the massacre, but then it somehow ended up being Caelum's story by the middle of the book. It was far too long and chaotic and I forced myself to finish it.
I won't be running out to buy the next Wally Lamb book.
Review: 2009-11-17
Ugh Like being let down by a good friend.
I LOVE She's Come Undone and I Know This Much is True. LOVE.
This book was awful. There were far too many subplots, none of the characters were sympathetic, and all of the jumps back to the Civil War era were just entirely unnecessary and boring.
I'm not even sure how I finished it. I just kept hoping that it would get better and it never did.
Review: 2009-11-15
Three Novels in One
Lamb is a good story teller. Only some characters were developed well enough to give us an idea of why they behaved the way they did. The book was far too long and could have been three novels: The story of the main character Caelum, his wife and living family and friends; the story of his parents, grandparents and friends; and the story of his ancestral female relatives.
These women, who lived in the 1800's, were of greater interest than the modern characters. These women of the 1800's really took care of business, family and made a positive contribution. They displayed fortitude, committment, loyalty and other qualities that the contemporary characters lacked.
The modern characters just screwed up their lives by making dumb choices, living stupidly and blaming their parents and others for the consequences of their poor choices. Are we supposed to see a contrast?
I've never read a novel, classic or modern where almost every possible bad experience in the world happens to the small group of contemporary characters, from the Columbine massacre to drug addiction to incest to horrible deaths, etc. Usually one or two tragic events is enough to set the stage for pages of high drama. This was a bit too much drama.
Review: 2009-11-12
The Hours This Book Wasted
I have been an enormous Wally Lamb fan over the last decade. I have been waiting for his third novel since 1997 when I was a freshman in high school. I am currently 28 to put it into perspective. I loved SCU and IKTMIT, but this novel feels like an after thought of his previous work. The story is contrived and rambles on for endless pages. It was impossible to put his past novels down, but I found myself anxious to stop reading. It was too painful for me, a woman, who attended high school during the Columbine shootings. I enrolled in the University of Colorado in 2000 and came face to face with many of the victims of Columbine. I can't imagine any of them are clamoring to read this novel. I feel sorry for Mr. Lamb during the afterword. He basically admits this novel as a failure in comparison to his past work, but hopes his coattails from the past two novels exonerate him from publishing this tome. He masks his writers block by limping through real life events that forever crippled a generation and a nation. I feel Mr. Lamb wronged the victims, my friends, by exploiting their story so he had a plot line. Mr. Lamb wrongly believes that this novel is the cure or an aid offered for our recovery. I appreciate his effort to help the victims he describes, but he doesn't get that his readership is reading his novels for entertainment and an escape from the reality of current events. We don't read to have it shoved in our faces. This novel made me feel some PTSD. I thought about the day in school we heard the announcement over the P.A. about Columbine and the day my college roommate ripped me out of bed at 7:15 a.m. screaming "New York is being bombed". I felt damaged by this novel as I read the highly predictable last line, it made me laugh a little bit at the ridiculousness melodrama Mr. Lamb published for the survivors of my generation lost to rage, war, natural disasters, and terrorism. Mr. Lamb pretends to understand my generation, but falls short of being able to develop integral characters of my generation such as Velvet, Morgan, and Jesse.
Also a major letdown is Mr. Lamb's need to undermine the wonderfully vague endings of his first two novels by intertwining his past main characters into Caelum's life. He casts them as supporting characters in his latest novel, but if you have read their individual stories you can't ignore the white elephant on the pages. I used to sit and think about what became of those characters and as much as it was frustrating it was amazing that Lamb let the reader be in charge of his extremely raw cThe Hour I First Believed: A Novel (P.S.)haracters future. It was their vulnerability that made them beloved and relatable. He undermines his reader and spells out the life lesson at the end of THIFB. Have we not learned to think for ourselves? I can't fathom why he would destroy his stellar reputation on a piece of garbage like this. Caelum is the afterbirth of Dominick Birdsey and all the material that went unused in IKTMIT. Mr. Lamb, I know you are capable of much greater work! Make sure you read this book when you are in a stable and confident frame of mind or you might find yourself way in over your head trying to cope with the vast array of emotional battles Mr. Lamb highlights.
If you are a Lamb fan I suggest you save $29.95, and don't hold your breath for a fourth novel anytime soon. He has cracked under the pressure of his editor, publisher, and readership. I fear his best writing days are behind him. He can't outshine his past talent.
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