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The Hour I First Believed
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2. "The Meaning of Loneliess," by Van Morrison from Wh at's Wrong with This Picture? (Morrison) In a bluesy mood, now-middle-aged Morrison explores the “existential dread” of life’s second half. Middle-aged Caelum’s pondering life’s meaning, too.
3. "A--hole," by James Luther Dickinson from Free Beer Tomorrow (Unobsky) “Ask any of us cynical bastards to lift up our shirt, and we’ll show you where we got shot in the heart,” says Caelum, as he angrily grieves two failed marriages and a third failing one.
4. "Black Books," by Nils Lofgren from The Sopranos - Peppers and Eggs: Music from the HBO Series (Lofgren) Lofgren’s mournful vocal, matched to his stunning guitar work, mirrors Caelum struggles to accept the jolting reality of Maureen’s infidelity.
5. "Useless Desires," by Patty Griffin from Impossible Dream (Griffin) Dr. Patel advises Caelum that if he cannot forgive his wife, he should move on. Instead, the Quirks move away from Three Rivers and toward tragedy in Littleton. Griffin’s bittersweet road song captures both the desire for and the futility of escape.
6. "At the Bottom of Everything," by Bright Eyes from I'm Wide Awake, It's Morning (C. Oberst) Conor Oberst (aka Bright Eyes) imagines an airplane ride every bit as strange as the one Caelum takes beside chaos theorist Mickey Schmidt.
7. "House Where Nobody Lives," by Tom Waits from Mule Variations (Waits) In response to his aunt’s stroke, and later, her death, Caelum returns to a now-empty farmhouse.
8. "When God Made Me," by Neil Young from Prairie Wind (Young) Caelum, back in Three Rivers and now in his late forties, contemplates an earlier, more innocent youth--and its loss.
9. "Mbube (The Lion Sleeps Tonight)," by Ladysmith Black Mambazo with Taj Mahal from Long Walk to Freedom (traditional) Mr. Mpipi performs a dance of hunger that turns into a dance of love, and a praying mantis egg case explodes with life on young Caelum’s windowsill.
10. "Believe," by Cher from The Very Best of Cher (B. Higgins/S. McClennan/P. Barry/S. Torch/M. Gray/T. Powell) “Believe” was inescapable in 1999, the year I toured Europe with my previous novel and began this one. The pop star’s durability causes Caelum to speculate that only two life forms would survive a nuclear holocaust: cockroaches and Cher.
11. "My Buddy," by Chet Baker from The Best of Chet Baker Sings (Donaldson/ Kahn) My dad used to sing this song to me when I was a little boy, riding beside him in our green Hudson during Saturday errands. Baker’s songs always makes me sad, but this one’s bittersweet. I played it over and over when I was writing the episode where Caelum’s father drives him to town to buy him his belated Christmas gift.
12. "Mary," by Patty Griffin from Flaming Red (Griffin) When the shooting begins in the Columbine library, Maureen crawls inside a cabinet, writes Caelum a goodbye note, and prays the Hail Mary.
13. "A Case of You," by Prince from < i>A Tribute to Joni Mitchell (Mitchell) This Joni Mitchell classic evokes, for me, the impact of Mo’s Columbine experience on the Quirks’ marriage.
14. "Losing My Religion," by R.E.M. from In Time: The Best of R.E.M 1988-2003 (M. Stipe/P. Buck) How could a merciful deity allow Columbine to happen? Caelum’s ambivalence about god turns to bitter rejection.
15. "Couldn’t Hear Nobody Pray," by Maggie and Suzzy Roche, Ysaye Barnwell, and DuPree from Zero Church (traditional) Disengaged and disspirited, Caelum gropes for a spiritual connection but hears only silence. This song was recorded by vocalists from the Roches and Sweet Honey in the Rock in the aftermath of 9/11/2001. The shadow of that cataclysmic day hung over my writing of this novel for six years.
16. "I Drink," by Mary Gauthier from Mercy Now (Gauthier/Harmon) As Maureen’s reliance on prescription drugs increases, Caelum, too, numbs himself--with his father’s, and later Ulysses’s, preferred poison.
17. "Hallelujah," by Jeff Buckley from So Real: Songs from Jeff Buckley (L. Cohen) Leonard Cohen’s haunting meditation about the spirit and the flesh has been covered by many artists. The late Jeff Buckley’s version is perhaps the loveliest and most poignant.
18. "The Ghost of Tom Joad," by Bruce Springsteen from The Ghost of Tom Joad (Springsteen) In the closing days of a traumatic school year, in a borrowed classroom, Caelum and his students discuss Steinbeck’s masterpiece, The Grapes of Wrath. Shortly after, Caelum and Mo will take to the road as the Joads did, yet they’ll travel from west to east.
Wally Lamb's two previous novels, She's Come Undone and I Know This Much Is True, struck a chord with readers. They responded to the intensely introspective nature of the books, and to their lively narrative styles and biting humor. One critic called Wally Lamb a "modern-day Dostoyevsky," whose characters struggle not only with their respective pasts, but with a "mocking, sadistic God" in whom they don't believe but to whom they turn, nevertheless, in times of trouble (New York Times).
In his new novel, The Hour I First Believed, Lamb travels well beyond his earlier work and embodies in his fiction myth, psychology, family history stretching back many generations, and the questions of faith that lie at the heart of everyday life. The result is an extraordinary tour de force, at once a meditation on the human condition and an unflinching yet compassionate evocation of character.
When forty-seven-year-old high school teacher Caelum Quirk and his younger wife, Maureen, a school nurse, move to Littleton, Colorado, they both get jobs at Columbine High School. In April 1999, Caelum returns home to Three Rivers, Connecticut, to be with his aunt who has just had a stroke. But Maureen finds herself in the school library at Columbine, cowering in a cabinet and expecting to be killed, as two vengeful students go on a carefully premeditated, murderous rampage. Miraculously she survives, but at a cost: she is unable to recover from the trauma. Caelum and Maureen flee Colorado and return to an illusion of safety at the Quirk family farm in Three Rivers. But the effects of chaos are not so easily put right, and further tragedy ensues.
While Maureen fights to regain her sanity, Caelum discovers a cache of old diaries, letters, and newspaper clippings in an upstairs bedroom of his family's house. The colorful and intriguing story they recount spans five generations of Quirk family ancestors, from the Civil War era to Caelum's own troubled childhood. Piece by piece, Caelum reconstructs the lives of the women and men whose legacy he bears. Unimaginable secrets emerge; long-buried fear, anger, guilt, and grief rise to the surface.
As Caelum grapples with unexpected and confounding revelations from the past, he also struggles to fashion a future out of the ashes of tragedy. His personal quest for meaning and faith becomes a mythic journey that is at the same time quintessentially contemporary—and American.
The Hour I First Believed is a profound and heart-rending work of fiction. Wally Lamb proves himself a virtuoso storyteller, assembling a variety of voices and an ensemble of characters rich enough to evoke all of humanity.
From the Author: Wally Lamb's Playlist for The Hour I First Believed
I’m often asked what novels by other authors I 'm reading when I’m writing one of my own. The better question is: What and who am I listening to? I’m pleased to share many of the tunes, recognizable and obscure, that helped me write Part I, "Butterfly" of my novel, The Hour I First Believed. I hope you enjoy them.
2. "The Meaning of Loneliess," by Van Morrison from Wh at's Wrong with This Picture? (Morrison) In a bluesy mood, now-middle-aged Morrison explores the “existential dread” of life’s second half. Middle-aged Caelum’s pondering life’s meaning, too.
3. "A--hole," by James Luther Dickinson from Free Beer Tomorrow (Unobsky) “Ask any of us cynical bastards to lift up our shirt, and we’ll show you where we got shot in the heart,” says Caelum, as he angrily grieves two failed marriages and a third failing one.
4. "Black Books," by Nils Lofgren from The Sopranos - Peppers and Eggs: Music from the HBO Series (Lofgren) Lofgren’s mournful vocal, matched to his stunning guitar work, mirrors Caelum struggles to accept the jolting reality of Maureen’s infidelity.
5. "Useless Desires," by Patty Griffin from Impossible Dream (Griffin) Dr. Patel advises Caelum that if he cannot forgive his wife, he should move on. Instead, the Quirks move away from Three Rivers and toward tragedy in Littleton. Griffin’s bittersweet road song captures both the desire for and the futility of escape.
6. "At the Bottom of Everything," by Bright Eyes from I'm Wide Awake, It's Morning (C. Oberst) Conor Oberst (aka Bright Eyes) imagines an airplane ride every bit as strange as the one Caelum takes beside chaos theorist Mickey Schmidt.
7. "House Where Nobody Lives," by Tom Waits from Mule Variations (Waits) In response to his aunt’s stroke, and later, her death, Caelum returns to a now-empty farmhouse.
8. "When God Made Me," by Neil Young from Prairie Wind (Young) Caelum, back in Three Rivers and now in his late forties, contemplates an earlier, more innocent youth--and its loss.
9. "Mbube (The Lion Sleeps Tonight)," by Ladysmith Black Mambazo with Taj Mahal from Long Walk to Freedom (traditional) Mr. Mpipi performs a dance of hunger that turns into a dance of love, and a praying mantis egg case explodes with life on young Caelum’s windowsill.
10. "Believe," by Cher from The Very Best of Cher (B. Higgins/S. McClennan/P. Barry/S. Torch/M. Gray/T. Powell) “Believe” was inescapable in 1999, the year I toured Europe with my previous novel and began this one. The pop star’s durability causes Caelum to speculate that only two life forms would survive a nuclear holocaust: cockroaches and Cher.
11. "My Buddy," by Chet Baker from The Best of Chet Baker Sings (Donaldson/ Kahn) My dad used to sing this song to me when I was a little boy, riding beside him in our green Hudson during Saturday errands. Baker’s songs always makes me sad, but this one’s bittersweet. I played it over and over when I was writing the episode where Caelum’s father drives him to town to buy him his belated Christmas gift.
12. "Mary," by Patty Griffin from Flaming Red (Griffin) When the shooting begins in the Columbine library, Maureen crawls inside a cabinet, writes Caelum a goodbye note, and prays the Hail Mary.
13. "A Case of You," by Prince from < i>A Tribute to Joni Mitchell (Mitchell) This Joni Mitchell classic evokes, for me, the impact of Mo’s Columbine experience on the Quirks’ marriage.
14. "Losing My Religion," by R.E.M. from In Time: The Best of R.E.M 1988-2003 (M. Stipe/P. Buck) How could a merciful deity allow Columbine to happen? Caelum’s ambivalence about god turns to bitter rejection.
15. "Couldn’t Hear Nobody Pray," by Maggie and Suzzy Roche, Ysaye Barnwell, and DuPree from Zero Church (traditional) Disengaged and disspirited, Caelum gropes for a spiritual connection but hears only silence. This song was recorded by vocalists from the Roches and Sweet Honey in the Rock in the aftermath of 9/11/2001. The shadow of that cataclysmic day hung over my writing of this novel for six years.
16. "I Drink," by Mary Gauthier from Mercy Now (Gauthier/Harmon) As Maureen’s reliance on prescription drugs increases, Caelum, too, numbs himself--with his father’s, and later Ulysses’s, preferred poison.
17. "Hallelujah," by Jeff Buckley from So Real: Songs from Jeff Buckley (L. Cohen) Leonard Cohen’s haunting meditation about the spirit and the flesh has been covered by many artists. The late Jeff Buckley’s version is perhaps the loveliest and most poignant.
18. "The Ghost of Tom Joad," by Bruce Springsteen from The Ghost of Tom Joad (Springsteen) In the closing days of a traumatic school year, in a borrowed classroom, Caelum and his students discuss Steinbeck’s masterpiece, The Grapes of Wrath. Shortly after, Caelum and Mo will take to the road as the Joads did, yet they’ll travel from west to east.
Praise for The Hour I First Believed
“Lamb...has delivered a tour de force, his best yet. A”
--Entertainment Weekly
“Lamb, a maestro of orchestrating emotion . . . knows how to make his fans’ hearts sing.”
--Elle
“A page-turner... Lamb remains a storyteller at the top of his game.”
--USA Today
“A soaring novel as amazingly graceful as the classic hymn that provides the title”
--Miami Herald
“Wally Lamb is a remarkable talent.”
--Columbus Dispatch
“Every character is rendered with vivid, utterly convincing depth....a heck of a page-turner.”
--Dallas Morning News
“[Lamb’s] pacing is superb: Sections of the story expand to accommodate a mix of characters, yet scenes don’t linger overlong.”
--Cleveland Plain Dealer
“Lamb has crafted another affecting, engrossing tome about complicated, interesting characters.”
--Minneapolis Star Tribune
“…too compelling to put down…a richly textured story...”
--St. Louis Post-Dispatch
“Lamb does an extraordinary job narrating some of the most terrifying tragedies of the past 10 years....an epic journey. Grade: A.”
--Rocky Mountain News
“When you put Lamb’s newest novel down, it will be reluctantly. It’s that good.”
--Knoxville News-Sentinel
From The Washington Post
From The Washington Post's Book World/washingtonpost.com Reviewed by Ron Charles A great story is buried in Wally Lamb's avalanche of a novel, The Hour I First Believed, but only the most determined readers will manage to dig it out. The author -- twice blessed by Oprah, for She's Come Undone and I Know This Much Is True -- can be a captivating storyteller, and he has built this story on one of the most shocking acts of violence in modern history. Sadly, though, his new novel becomes so burdened by diversions, delays, tangents and side plots that the whole rambling enterprise grows maddening, the kind of book you want to throw across the room, if only you could lift it. The narrator is a middle-aged English teacher named Caelum who's trying to hold together his third marriage. When he discovers that his wife, Maureen, is cheating on him, he attacks her lover with a pipe wrench. This is, from start to finish, a novel about the effects of anger, the torrent of destruction that's easily triggered and difficult to repair. Hoping to remake their lives after Maureen's adultery and Caelum's prosecution for assault, they move to Colorado and get jobs at Columbine High School. In April of 1999, when Caelum flies back to Connecticut to check on his sickly aunt, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold enact their deadly rampage. Caught in the school's library, Maureen hides in a cabinet listening to students being taunted and slaughtered. Lamb doesn't provide the sort of psychological insight into the perpetrators that we got from Richard Russo's and Lionel Shriver's novels about school shootings, but he knows just how to let the details of a tragedy unfold without decoration or commentary. He's a master at the kind of direct, unadorned narrative that brings these events alive in all their visceral power. The most terrifying section of The Hour I First Believed is essentially a docudrama of the Columbine massacre, describing the actual events, naming the real victims and heroes and providing chilling excerpts from Klebold's and Harris's journals and videotapes. Lamb's depiction of the aftermath is equally wrenching: parents waiting all night in the gym for lists of the dead, the sound of hundreds of cell phones ringing in uncollected backpacks, the sight of such a happy place transformed into a morgue. In many ways, this horrendous incident is a natural subject for Lamb. He's long been interested in the lingering effects of trauma and the process of emotional recovery, and it's a relief to see that his treatment bears none of the shiny optimism associated with his famous talk-show patron. Although Lamb is too earnest for satire, The Hour I First Believed makes ironic references to Dr. Phil, Chicken Soup for the Grieving Soul and the whole recovery industry that's grown up in the last couple of decades. As Caelum attends funerals, memorial services and counseling meetings after the massacre, he hears the full symphony of recovery theology, but he remains bitterly skeptical. "Maybe there was something to this 'power of prayer' stuff, and maybe there wasn't," he says. "But I resented the white-haired woman, shilling for God among the walking wounded." At the main funeral, attended by 70,000 mourners, including Amy Grant, Billy Graham's son and Al Gore, Caelum can't shake his resistance to their healing messages. When the crowd is exhorted to shout, "Columbine is love," Caelum won't do it. And later, when a chillingly efficient therapist begins her PowerPoint presentation on the process of grief, Caelum complains, "Too technical . . . she's talking to sufferers, not psych majors." The most moving example of the difficulty of recovering from psychological trauma is Caelum's wife. "Mo's one of the victims you've never read about in the Columbine coverage," he tells us. "One of the collaterally damaged." Overwhelmed by flashbacks and panic attacks, she can't return to work or handle the basic tasks of daily life. Caelum tries to do whatever she needs, be whomever she needs, but she remains either zoned out or combative, at constant risk of overdosing on tranquilizers. Caelum struggles to understand what's happening to her as she alternately pushes him away and begs for his affection. In hopes of providing her with a more peaceful setting, they move back to his family's farmhouse in Connecticut and try to start over. Maureen can't shake her demons, though. Alone and despairing, Caelum throws himself into researching the massacre, hoping to gain some understanding of his wife's condition, but the sheer volume of competing theories only depresses him more. This portrayal of a couple dealing with the asymmetrical effects of trauma is Lamb at his best, wholly sympathetic, deeply moving. If only the author had stayed with these ample elements, he would have had a powerful novel about two people determined to care for each other despite unfathomable challenges. But as the story moves further along, its focus blurs and the relationship at the center fades away. How much more disaster does a novel require, you may ask, than the deadliest high school shooting in America? The answer, apparently, is much, much more. This giant book becomes an encyclopedia of tragedy and mayhem, including but not limited to the Civil War, the Korean War, the Iraq War, Katrina, vehicular manslaughter, gang rape, kidnapping, dismemberment, alcoholism, suicide (by gun, by train), child abuse, self-mutilation, drug addiction, bankruptcy and infanticide: a menu of misery that could fill Oprah's schedule for a decade. What's surprising, though, is how this second half of the novel fails even as melodrama. It gets bogged down in the history of a women's prison that one of Caelum's relatives started more than 100 years earlier. Clearly, this subject is important to Lamb -- he's spent years teaching female prisoners in the York Correctional Institution in Connecticut -- and there's fascinating material here about the counterproductive ways we punish people, but he seems strangely unwilling to provide much insight into the lives of the women inmates. Instead, in a move that ruins the engaging domestic storyline, Maureen is pushed off stage when Caelum discovers in his attic a collection of 19th-century letters that mention everybody from Mark Twain to Harriet Beecher Stowe to Nikola Tesla. Herein begins an exceedingly tedious mystery about the real identity of Caelum's late mother. He gives the old letters to a feminist scholar for her dissertation about the founding of the women's prison, and at least 75 pages of her scholarly document are dumped into the novel, with deadening effect. Even Caelum complains about how boring this is. Trying to read his friend's dissertation, he says, "I shifted the pillows, glanced over at the clock radio. Only nine twenty-three? God, it felt more like midnight." Rarely have I felt such empathy with a character. "I fought it for as long as I could, attempting over and over to get to the end of that same sentence. Then I surrendered to sleep." But I still had more than 100 pages to go. And then Lamb's "Afterword." And then his "Notes From the Author." And then his "Acknowledgments." And then his "List of Sources Consulted." And then his list of "Charitable Donations." All so earnest and far, far too much.
Copyright 2008, The Washington Post. All Rights Reserved.
Copyright 2008, The Washington Post. All Rights Reserved.
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college boy, astral weeks, inciting disturbance, absent boy, corn maze Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
First Believed, The Hour, Lizzy Popper, New York, Aunt Lolly, Three Rivers, Bride Lake, Mary Agnes, New Haven, Miss Dank, Miss Rheingold, Miss Hogan, Eric Harris, Paul Hay, Grandpa Quirk, Charles Popper, Shipley Hospital, Jesus Christ, Nancy Tucker, Velvet Hoon, Carole Alderman, Civil War, Mama Mia, Great-Grandma Lydia, Kareem Kendricks Browse Sample Pages:
Front Cover | Front Flap | First Pages | Back Flap | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
college boy, astral weeks, inciting disturbance, absent boy, corn maze Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
First Believed, The Hour, Lizzy Popper, New York, Aunt Lolly, Three Rivers, Bride Lake, Mary Agnes, New Haven, Miss Dank, Miss Rheingold, Miss Hogan, Eric Harris, Paul Hay, Grandpa Quirk, Charles Popper, Shipley Hospital, Jesus Christ, Nancy Tucker, Velvet Hoon, Carole Alderman, Civil War, Mama Mia, Great-Grandma Lydia, Kareem Kendricks Browse Sample Pages:
Front Cover | Front Flap | First Pages | Back Flap | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
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