Purchase
The Hour I First Believed
Wally Lamb
Harper
November 2008
On Sale: November 1, 2008
Featuring: Caelum Quirk
752 pages
ISBN: 0060393491
EAN: 9780060393496
Hardcover
Add to Wish List
Fiction
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.
Comments
No comments posted.
Registered users may leave comments.
Log in or register now!
| 
© 2003-2024 off-the-edge.net
all rights reserved Privacy Policy