Customer Reviews

I Know This Much Is True

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Lately, so much contemporary American fiction is disappointing ("best sellers" with trite, hackneyed, formulaic plots and dead middles), so when a book like Wally Lamb's I Know This Much is True comes along, I feel hopeful that others may be possible--probably not often of this caliber, though. I read this book in 12 days while traveling and devoured its 900 pages under beautiful blue skies as well as under 20 watt bulbs, and I loved every single minute and word of it. That was a year ago, and I have not read since then a novel that I can recommend as highly. Do not be scared away by the book's length (or the Oprah club sticker on the cover). I have heard so many people whine that it looks too long and thus they avoid it. What they don't realize is that its length is part of its magic; it reads so smoothly and never slumps. In truth, this is a brilliant multi-layered story and a masterpiece in every sense: its style is poetic and innovative, its characters three dimensional and very real, its imagery absolutely beautiful, and its metaphors perfectly subliminal. This book has been reviewed and reviewed and reviewed here, so if you want to know the plot, read others. I will offer that it has one of the most profound endings I have ever read. But take it from me, this book will not disappoint you. Moreover, it will do something for you that most cannot: it will give you wisdom and awaken your battered heart. I cannot wait to read anything else this wonderful man writes. How he does it, I wish I knew. I am just thankful that he does. Some superlatives are carelessly tossed around, but Wally Lamb IS one of the greatest American authors of all time. This work will stand the test of time.

Like some other reviewers, I was initially a little gunshy about starting to read a 900-plus page book about a pair of twins, one of whom is a paranoid schizophrenic. However, the first chapter graps your attention and the next thing you know, you are halfway through the book and looking forward to coming home to it every night.

Lamb was woven a tapestry of characters who come alive and stay with you, not the glamorous models and young aggressive attorneys of most bestsellers these days, but real people. The book is narrated by Dominic Birdsey, a 40-ish housepainter and former teacher who feels a tremendous burden in caring for Thomas, his identical twin. Often told in flashback, the passages recounting school trips and summer jobs involving the two brothers are so vivid, and so heartwarming, they almost become your own memories.

Perhaps the most original portions of the book revolve around the long-hidden manuscript of Dominic's maternal grandfather, an Italian immigrant, which Dominic reads (as his world crumbles around him) to try and uncover clues regarding his family's past, and specifically regarding his own father's identity. This "book within a book" steals the show, with its coarse Italian style and the unmistakable bravado of the grandfather-narrator.

The novel is tied up almost a little too neatly at the end, as if Lamb saw the size of his manuscript and decided to quickly wrap things up. That's almost a testament to the enjoyment I had in reading the book, as I thought, after 912 pages, that it ended too quickly.

However, as the bibliography at the end makes clear, the author has clearly done his research regarding paranoid schizophrenia and the difficulties faced by caregivers. Many of the flashbacks are woven into the plot through Dominic's therapy sessions. What started out as a sad and moving tale of sickness and brotherly devotion ultimately turned into a novel of spiritual renewal and awakening. I give it a big thumbs up.

I KNOW THIS MUCH IS TRUE by Wally Lamb

Dominick Birdsey learns about his family and himself in I KNOW THIS MUCH IS TRUE, Wally Lamb's epic novel that centers on two men, identical twins, one of whom is mentally ill.

A whopping 897 pages (the trade paper back version), this book goes into great detail the life story of Dominick Birdsey, his paranoid schizoid brother Thomas, their timid mother and their grandfather who started his life in Italy.

The opening chapter takes us to the public library and Thomas has just performed self-mutilation: he has chopped off his hand in response to the Gulf War (Operation Desert Shield). And Dominick is there to rescue Thomas, as he's done their entire life. Thomas is taken to a psychiatric hospital for close observation, but in the mean time, Dominick ends up meeting with the psychiatrists, who help Dominick deal with issues he has with his brother, and soon a whole slew of issues comes rolling off of his tongue. It's an uphill battle, but through the help of the psychiatrists and his grandfather's journal, Dominick learns to deal with his anger and his frustrations over his life, and he comes to terms with a lot of things that he felt resentment over in the past.

There is not enough I can say about this book. It was quite the novel, with so much detail to the life stories of these people, covering three generations from Italy to America. Yet it all helped to tell Dominick's story. It surely was not a light read, but despite the huge volume, I was able to finish this book in less than two weeks. It is fast paced and there's never a dull moment. I'd say this is one of the best books selected by Oprah that I've read so far, and is part of my top 10 list of books read in 2002.

Like a lot of other people, I couldn't put this book down--once I got through the first two hundred pages. It was a pop culture version of the hero myth. A regular guy who is called to a life outsie the mainstream. Dominick was burdened with his sick brother but it was this experience that gave him his access to wisdom through forgiveness and sacrifice.

Before I read this book I had heard people say that Lamb's portrayal of the woman in She's Come Undone was nothing less than an amazing feat for a male writer. I was blown away by his understanding of Italian culture and Italian- American experience in I Know This Much Is True. The experience he wrote of is very dark--much different than the story of my own family--but the essence of it was so on target I am still stunned.

I thought the ending was weak. Dominick could have found happiness without everything working out with typical American perfection. It was dissapointing to me but I still loved the book and highly recommend it to anyone who wants to enjoy a book that is funny, tragic, educational and thought provoking. This book taps into something in us--thats why nobody I know who has read it was able to put it down.

I Know This Much Is True is by no means an easy or even pleasant book to read but it is certainly an incredible one, far surpassing Lamb's debut novel, She's Come Undone. Inventive and imaginative, I Know This Much Is True is one of those rare books that has the ability to make every other book pale beside its brilliance.

This is the story of Dominick Birdsey's journey, and it is a journey fraught with insanity, pain, hatred and, most of all, love. As the journey begins, his identical twin brother Thomas has somehow managed to cut off his hand at the local library in order to purge the world of its sins in the weeks just prior to the war in Kuwait. Thomas is a paranoid schizophrenic and Dominick, fortunately or unfortunately, has been his brother's keeper since their mother's death from cancer.

The story's core is formed by the relationship between the two brothers. When Dominick meets with Thomas' psychiatrist, in order to help her better understand Thomas, he soon realizes that he must help himself as well. Filled with anger and sorrow at the personal losses and mistreatment in his life, Dominick realizes that he is not the man he ought to be or longs to be.

Wally Lamb weaves in and out of time like a master storyteller and creates coincidences that allow his characters and their descendants to become an integral part of Dominick's family history for three generations. When Dominick learns that his mother is dying, for instance, he takes her father's Italian biography to have it translated as an end-of-life gift to her. The female scholar he hires, however, absconds with it after Dominick turns down her sexual overtures. Years later, after Dominick has injured himself in a fall from a ladder, this same woman reappears in his life with the translated work. This happens, of course, just in time for Dominick's intensive psychoanalysis, which includes reading the biography of the very angry and narcissistic man who is Dominick's grandfather (and who also happens to have been called, Dominick).

The biography, itself, holds many surprises, such as the fact that a Native American named Drinkwater shares his liquor with one of the elder Dominick's brothers, causing the man to lose his job. In fact, an entire dynasty of Drinkwaters play a continuing role throughout this narrative, eventually affecting not only the elder Dominick, but his daughter and grandson in very intricate ways that only eventually become apparent.

There are many characters that appear throughout this book, and each of them is a complex and multi-faceted individual. No cardboard cut-outs here. Everyone has a real history, and, like real people, they are a mix of good and bad and somewhere-in-between. The only character who seems to be lacking in depth is Dessa, Dominick's ex-wife, for whom he still pines.

The story loops back and forth from current time to the years when Dominick and Thomas were growing up, then takes a giant leap back to Grandfather Dominick's day, then back to current times again. Never confusing, never disconcerting and all as smooth as silk. The reader comes to feel exactly what Dominick is feeling as he makes his way through life.

Dominick's connection with Thomas forms the heart of the book. He feels relief over being the sane twin but pain as well, and resentment at his responsibilities for Thomas. There is a sadness at being left out of his mother's special relationship with Thomas and the fear of encroaching insanity in his own life as well. These are powerful emotions, but Lamb handles them expertly and never slips into melodrama.

This is a book where characters journey to the brink of insanity and then, somehow, find their way back to health and wholeness. Lamb, however, unlike many other, lesser authors, adds so many new dimensions and surprises to this story that we can only marvel at his talent.

Ok, I must admit, when I first began the book I found it extremely tedious. After a long day's work who wants to come home and read about somebody else's misery? Us readers pick up a book to escape, not to hear about somebody else's problems worse then our own. I mean, if I wanted to hear problems I would just call up one of my girlfriends.

So I put the book down for a couple of weeks and went on to another novel, only to be done with it in 5 days time. I picked up I Know This Much is True once again due to lack of any other reading material and just kept reading and reading. Within two days time I absolutely could not put it down. This novel penetrates each characters persona in such a way that you feel like you know them inside and out. The story takes you though the daily struggles of Dominick with flashbacks to his childhood so you begin to really understand and feel why his anger exists and the long downward jouney that led Thomas to where he resides. This story will make you laugh, want to cry, feel angry, and most of all permeate your daily life, so much so that you will be thinking about it during the course of your day. And don't be put off by the size-one reason it does effect the reader is because it becomes part of the readers life for so long because of the time it takes to read.

This is a wonderful book about the circumstances that shape us and the destruction that causes reconstruction in our lives

Wally Lamb has this wonderful ability to capture your imagination with a wonderful story. Once you start reading it, you simply cannot put it down.

I thought that this book would take me a couple of weeks. I believe that I finished this book in a week, and I'm not a speed reader by nature.

Dominick is a tortured soul who has reached a point in his life where he is trying to discover who he is. He has spent most of his life protecting his identical twin schizophrenic brother.

Lamb succesfully describes every detail of Dominick's life with much grace. Dominick is like an everyman who has been dealt a heavy hand in life. It really becomes interesting when Dominick reads his grandfather's journal.

If you want to escape into the wonderful world of Wally Lamb's imagination, then you definitely want to read this book.

This novel is like a trip into a mine shaft. It takes you down, down, down, farther than you'd ever think possible, into the narrator's somewhat depressing and pitiable life. Down past a schizophrenic yet Christian pacifist identical twin, down past a failed marriage to a still unrequited love, down past an adolescence filled with the guilt of participation in racism and sexism, down past a shy, mysterious mother, a cold stepfater, and a quasi-psychotic girlfriend. Once you're down at the bottom, along with the hero, you are somehow, in a jarring, confusing, and eminently satisfying literary treat, brought back up by a mysoginistic grandfather and his almost comically ridiculous life story. It sounds, even as I write this having read the book, like it's too much, like it doesn't and can't make sense. But after finishing all 900-odd pages, you'll see the sense and you'll understand the story and you'll scream to read it again.

There are no words to describe the power of this book. You will be completely engulfed by the characters, the realism, the storyline, the passion, the pain - ALL of it is phenomenal. I was SAD to finish reading this (which I read all 900 pages in a week b/c it's THAT good) and will be hardpressed to find something else to read even comparable to this.

Don't miss out on reading this. It will change the way you look at life.

A story within a story whose tragic characters sometimes fail to win our sympathy simply because this psychological treatise is (exhaustingly) long. Lamb would have garnered as much enthusiasm for his tale with 300-400 fewer pages. Although many critics here dislike the often referred to "tidy" ending, it can be argued that Dominic's life essentially begins when many of his family's questions are answered and his conflicts resolved. Unlike SHE'S COME UNDONE's unputdownable quality, TRUE succeeds in raising several analytical and discussionable questions. I'm not sorry I read it.