I Know This Much Is True (Oprah’s Book Club)
August 28, 2008
“PerfectBound e-book extra: Who Is Wally Lamb? The author addresses the National Endowment for the Arts. With his stunning debut novel, She’s Come Undone, Wally Lamb won the adulation of critics and readers with his mesmerizing tale of one woman’s painful yet triumphant journey of self-discovery. Now, this brilliantly talented writer returns with I Know This Much Is True, a heartbreaking and poignant multigenerational saga of the reproductive bonds of destruction and the powerful force of forgiveness. A masterpiece that breathtakingly tells a story of alienation and connection, power and abuse, devastation and renewal–this novel is a contemporary retelling of an ancient Hindu myth. A proud king must confront his demons to achieve salvation. Change yourself, the myth instructs, and you will inhabit a renovated world. “Dominick Birdsey is an epic hero and his story is an inspiring, darkly comic talk of redemption - a late twentieth-century Les Miserables.”(Glamour) “Twice as thoughtful and twice as heart-wrenching as most published this year. An exercise in soul-baring storytelling - with the soul belonging to 20th-century American itself. It’s hard to read and to stop reading, and impossible to forget.” (USA Today) “…a fully developed and triumphantly resolved exploration of one man’s suffering and redemption.” (Publisher Weekly, starred review) “A work of astonishing craftsmanship, structural symmetry, and literary self-awareness.. Read it and weep.” (St. Louis Post-Dispatch)
Customer Review: Great read
This book goes over the psychological aspect of twins and makes it even more intense with one of the twins being schizophrenic. Fantastic to the final page.
Customer Review: ONE OF MY FAVORITE BOOKS, EVER
Stepping Off the Edge: Learning & Living Spiritual Practice
One of the things I appreciate most about this book is Lamb’s ability to show the complexity and nobility of ordinary people. He doesn’t pretty up anything, showing his characters accurately and empathetically. This is a story of great length and complexity. I enjoyed every minute, as did my reading group. I’m not going to repeat things that other reviewers have said, but I will note that Lamb set his story at exactly the right time. A new generation of effective drugs to treat schizophrenia burst forth in the 1980s and 90s, with the result that a diagnosis of schizophrenia is no longer a sentence to living hell. Today, schizophrenia is a treatable disease. As the parent of a schizophrenic, I was overjoyed to see my child become indistinguishable from the normal kids around her as new drugs enabled her to recover. Had Lamb set his story a little later, he would have had a different tale. As it is, he wrote a magnificent story smacking of ancient epics. Buy from here…
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