I got this book for Christmas, as I made a plea for only two books for presents and my husband was kind enough to buy them for me.

So maybe I should check and see what the book is actually about before I request it. 

Wally Lamb – I loved his other two books She’s Come Undone and I Know This Much is True and generally one can go on the writing style of previous books in order to determine future enjoyment by purchasing books from the same author.  Now, let me clarify, Lamb’s writing style has not changed, and I enjoy his narrative style very much.  It’s just that I didn’t like the book.

First of all, it took me two months to read.  Two months!  If I love a book, I’ll finish it in a week or a few days.  Two months!  Even the horrible Portrait of a Lady by Henry James only took me six weeks.  Two months!

I must admit, some of that time, especially in the first part of the book, was needed processing time.  Lamb concentrates the first part of the story on the shootings at Columbine, putting our fictional married hero and heroine as workers at the high school.  The heroine is caught in the library as the shootings are occurring and the hero is out of town.  Being a victim of gun crime myself, I found Lamb really did an excellent job at getting at the trauma of the emotional aftermath of the victims of this type of violence, and was very sensitive to the fact that the people affected are not only the ones present.  Good job, Lamb! 

I suppose, if you boil it down, I didn’t like our hero, the narrator.  Simply put, he’s an ass. Regardless of how he tries to redeem himself, I didn’t believe it.  Three times married, and nearly three times failed, he suddenly has an epiphany of being in love with his wife (who has been unfaithful in the past) while he is frantically travelling back to Littleton?  The guy does show signs of incredible patience with her over the long haul of her emotional recovery and financial burden of her unemployment and later lawyer’s fee (can’t spoil it).  But is this love or simply commitment?  He seems to carry a bitterness for her and the situation she has put him in right until the end (and I can’t spoil that either).

Meanwhile, we lost sight of the heroine through the middle third of the book as we go on a meandering journey of the hero’s mother’s and grandmother’s and great-grandmother’s past as related to the reader through letters and other’s recollections.  This is where Lamb lost me.  I already don’t like the hero and I really don’t care for his mother or grandmother or great-grandmother either.  And, as a added bonus, who is real and who is fictional because I’m lost.  All of a sudden we have Mark Twain and Louisa May Alcott popping up.  Huh?

Lamb, your writing is still great and I won’t complain over being entertained by it – but seriously, man, everyone does not get redemption.  Not everyone. 

And one last thing:  God with a small ‘g’ bothers me.  That’s his name, like Wally is yours.

p.s. I did really enjoy that Picasso painting of  Minotauromachia.