Wally Lamb is a difficult writer to get into. You hear great praise for his books, are number 16 on the hold list at the library, then get the book and it’s like, Huh?
I Know This Much is True was a no brainer. It’s a story about twins, so of course I read it.
She’s Come Undone was another clunker that I devoured once I got past the opening prose.
The Hour I First Believed…I blame Dave Cullen for my inability to complete this book. Dave Cullen wrote Columbine, a comprehensive, well researched and shockingly impartial view of the tragedy in Littleton, Colorado on April 20, 1999. Cullen’s book was a daytime read (I spook easily) and Lamb’s book was what I read before going to bed.
In The Hour, Lamb’s Caelum and his wife Maureen are teachers in the school. Due to the death of Caelum’s aunt, Caelum misses the school take down, but Maureen doesn’t. She’s stuck in the library during the killers’ last acts of cruelty and it affect her to the point where she and Caelum must begin anew in another state.
I want to have sympathy for Maureen, but she’s a selfish mother-shut-your-mouth! The chick had an affair in the beginning of the book, then becomes a skittish chick in the middle of the book. I have tried, but can’t finish. As it stands, Maureen has become a drug addict, and Caelum is left to keep their family together.
Perhaps it’s my dislike of inserting real life into fiction because it has a feel of editorializing (I dislike The Coldest Winter Ever by Sista Soulja for the same reason). Whatever the reason, I’m okay with not finishing this book.
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