The Hour I First Believed [Hardcover]

Wally Lamb (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: 2008

November 2008 NY: HarperCollins First edition, first printing, mint, new/unread in a flawless dustjacket, signed by the author.

Product Details

• Hardcover
• Publisher: Harper-collins Publishers; First Edition edition (2008)
• ISBN-10: 1615608931
• ISBN-13: 978-1615608935
• ASIN: B001S2Y258
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 5.8 x 2.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (472 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,524,389 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Wally Lamb's first two novels, She's Come Undone (Simon & Schuster/Pocket, 1992) and I Know This Much Is True (HarperCollins/ReganBooks, 1998), were # 1 New York Times bestsellers, New York Times Notable Books of the Year, and featured titles of Oprah's Book Club. I Know This Much Is True was a Book of the Month Club main selection and the June 1999 featured selection of the Bertelsman Book Club, the national book club of Germany. Between them, She's Come Undone and I Know This Much Is True have been translated into eighteen languages. Lamb is also the editor of the nonfiction anthologies Couldn't Keep It to Myself: Testimonies from Our Imprisoned Sisters (HarperCollins/ReganBooks, 2003) and I'll Fly Away (HarperCollins, 2007), collections of autobiographical essays which evolved from a writing workshop Lamb facilitates at Connecticut's York Correctional Institute, a maximum-security prison for women. He has served as a Connecticut Department of Corrections volunteer from 1999 to the present. Wally Lamb is a Connecticut native who holds Bachelors and Masters Degrees in teaching from the University of Connecticut and a Master of Fine Arts in Writing from Vermont College. Lamb was in the ninth year of his twenty-five-year career as a high school English teacher at his alma mater, the Norwich Free Academy, when he began to write fiction in 1981. He has also taught writing at the University of Connecticut, where he directed the English Department's creative writing program. Wally Lamb has said of his fiction, "Although my characters' lives don't much resemble my own, what we share is that we are imperfect people seeking to become better people. I write fiction so that I can move beyond the boundaries and limitations of my own experiences and better understand the lives of others. That's also why I teach. As challenging as it sometimes is to balance the two vocations, writing and teaching are, for me, intertwined." Honors for Wally Lamb include: the Connecticut Center for the Book's Lifetime Achievement Award, the Connecticut Bar Association's Distinguished Public Service Award, the Barnes & Noble Writers for Writers Award, the Connecticut Governor's Arts Award, The National Institute of Business/Apple Computers "Thanks to Teachers" Award. Lamb has received Distinguished Alumni awards from Vermont College and the University of Connecticut. He was the 1999 recipient of the New England Book Award for fiction. I Know This Much Is True won the Friends of the Library USA Readers' Choice Award for best novel of 1998, the result of a national poll, and the Kenneth Johnson Memorial Book Award, which honored the novel's contribution to the anti-stigmatization of mental illness. She's Come Undone was a 1992 "Top Ten" Book of the Year selection in People magazine and a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Award for Best First Novel of 1992. Wally Lamb's third novel, The Hour I First Believed, explores chaos theory by interfacing several generations of a fictional Connecticut family with such nonfictional American events as the Civil War, the Columbine High School shootings of 1999, the Iraq War, and Hurricane Katrina. The book will be published by HarperCollins in November of 2008.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

109 of 124 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Gritty, confident, witty, and direct, November 12, 2008

By 

Benjamin (UK) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: The Hour I First Believed: A Novel (Hardcover)

The story begins with the Columbine School Massacre, having followed the seemingly innocent culprits before the event. It then goes into fiction centred on the two main characters, husband and wife, and how they are affected, along with glimpses into their family's past. It all makes for an epic journey.

I must admit had difficulty finishing this book, the reason? Quite simply I did not like the character who was the narrator. The narrator, Caelum Quirk, is an educated man, a teacher, but he has among other failings anger management problems, a wife who was once unfaithful, and they both are prone to using unsavoury language. To follow them through their traumatic experiences was at time almost a burden. For me it is important to feel something for the main characters in a story, to care about them, but here I was unable to connect.

Maybe the fault is mine. The book is extremely well written and reads with great ease. It is gritty, confident, witty, and direct; putting aside my reservations it would make very involving and rewarding reading. But if I am going to become involved in a story it is essential that I am able to feel something of the main characters; I do not expect them to be perfect, but I need to be able warm to them, to care about them, and here I could not.

107 of 123 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Love Wally Lamb - very disapointed, December 2, 2008

By 

CVH "CVH" (Houston, Texas) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Hour I First Believed: A Novel (Hardcover)

I consider Wally Lamb to be one of the most personally influential authors I have ever read. I have waited in anticipation for this book to be released. He lacks in areas I normally site as his strength - character development. Usually Lamb has the power to pull you into the body of the character and feel their emotions with them however in this work, I merely felt that he used side stories to distract from the fact that none of them had depth. Maureen, 'Mo' is the character I found the most appealing, but because the story is written from her husbands point of view, her deep tragedy goes without any sort of lasting impact on the reader. Lamb claims to have chosen events & people that occurred over the past 8 years to draw inspiration from and give them everlasting tributes through their impact in his characters lives. But all he manages to achieve is a listless and unconvincing review of the events of the stories we still see day to day on the 6 o'clock news. His closing remarks reveal that he struggled with writing this book, and I believe the pressure got to him... he wasn't true to himself in this work. Such a shame.

23 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Not his Best, December 18, 2008

By 

deeper waters (Michigan, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Hour I First Believed: A Novel (Hardcover)

I listened to the first 11 chapters on CD before the print version hit the library and suspect that my ability to finish it had a lot to do with the option if offered to skim/skip many pages of the book. The historical piece was an interesting effort to explain the present, but could have been equally if not more effective with much less of it. Like the narrator of the story, the author seemed to be lost, not quite sure what to do about the people and events in his life, almost but not quite connecting in a way that enriched anyone. It reminded me of papers written by students with an abundance of material but insufficient insight as to the purpose of the assignment and not enough time to figure it out. This was a solid effort but even though I do not regret the time I spent on it, it is also a book that I would recommend only with reservation.