Rating: 
Summary: A complete story
Review: I read this book while in my first year of college. I found it difficult to stick to at first, probably because of school, but by the time I got to the middle of the book, I found myself putting homework aside just to read more. It is a great story full of love, confusion, and even a little mystery. I recommend this book to all serious readers.
Rating:
Summary: One of my TOP 5 favorites of all time!
Review: With over a thousand reviews of this book already submitted, this one will probably get lost in the shuffle, but I KNOW THIS MUCH IS TRUE is absolutely spectacular in its scope, its power, and its artistry. All the big themes are here, played out by believable, wonderful, infuriating, totally human characters. I particularly enjoyed George Guidall's narration in the unabridged audio version of the book. Like HANDLING SIN (by Michael Malone), this was an epic that I wished would never end. It will go down as one of the best reads of my life!
Rating:
Summary: I Know This Much Is True
Review: Reserve about 2 weeks of your life, and read this book. It is the most remarkable book I have ever read.
Rating: 
Summary: Survivor Guilt
Review: Upon reflection, I have mixed feelings about this book. The story is sustained over 900 plus pages, kind of "Everyman's Dysfunctional Dictionary" with a twist: twins. The storyline feels authentic as we flash between the growing years of the twins, Thomas and Dominick. In his twenties Thomas develops schizophrenia, and his brother becomes the caretaker after their mother's death. Dominick does not undertake his task lightly. In fact, it dominates his entire life. However, Dominick is not so much a victim as the survivor trying to find the light of day. He has mixed feelings about their mother, who seems to favor the more sensitive twin, Thomas. The only father figure for the boys is their stepfather, Ray, a man who is verbally and sometimes physically abusive, especially to his wife and Thomas. As they grow, the twins are confused in finding their manhood, in some part due to the passivity of the mother. Born with a harelip, she is self-effacing and often hides her mouth behind her hand. Before dying of cancer, the mother bestows a manuscript on Dominick, written enitrely in Italian dialect by the maternal grandfather. Due to circumstances, Dominick does not recover the translation of the manuscript until after his mother's death. When Thomas is institutionalized for amputating his hand in a misguided sacrifice to stop the Gulf War, Dominick tries vainly to free his twin from the bureaucratic mental health system. At the same time, Dominick finds himself reading the translated copy of their grandfather's story, hoping for a clue to the past and the true identity of his father. Instead, he learns what a misanthropic monster his grandfather really was. Dominick also works closely with the psychiatrist treating Thomas. The psychiatrist not only tries to help Thomas, but tries to make Dominick aware of the shackles his life has placed upon him. It is amazing that all these plot lines actually make sense in context, even the Scicilian memior. That they do is probably the result of the ability of dysfunction to adapt itself to normalcy. As well, there are a lot of appendage images: Thomas amputates his own hand, Dominick breaks his leg, Ray has a foot amputated because of Diabetes, the mother has a harelip. The only really false note comes at the end of this lengthy novel. In the space of a few pages, Dominick is reunited with his ex-wife to raise the child of a former girlfriend who dies of AIDS and finds out the identity of his real father. The ending is disingenuous and facile in its resolution of loose ends. While I was never bored through my reading of this novel, I doubt that I would read it a second time.
Rating:
Summary: If you are a twin, read this!
Review: Wally Lamb has captured the relationship between identical twins better than any other author I have read. My identical twin gave me this book, stating that it described so many things about the bond between twins perfectly. When Dominick sacrifices his self to save Thomas it is heartwrenching. I highly recommend this book.
Rating: 
Summary: Did we read the same book?
Review: Reading this book felt like doing homework. I read it quickly so that I could put it behind me and move onto anything else. Like some other critical readers, I felt that the plot lines and characters were hardly believable. The length of the novel would have been bearable if the narrator didn't painstakingly pound into our heads the same litany of griefs, not even with much diversity of analysis. While this tendency was tiresome, it was only exaccerbated by the lack of any successful surprise, since Lamb gives away almost every outcome long before the final "revelations".
The only redeeming part of the novel was the grandfather's manuscript. But even this so-called translation from the "original" Italian was stereotypical and shoddy. For example, although the narrator wrote the manuscript in Italian (the translation is posthumous), its narrator actually points out that a portion of dialog was spoken in Italian ("Italian was the language I shouted back at her". p 743) as if the manuscript had been written, not by an Italian for Italians in Italian, but for an English-speaking audience (...and so it was...). Perhaps this is supposed to add color to the text, but for me it was a distraction.
Overall, this book was a fat waste of time.
Rating:
Summary: Lots of Work, Not Such Great Payoff
Review: Domenick Birdsey just wants a fighting chance to be his own man but a schizophrenic indentical twin, an unknown father, a dead mother, an angry (and also deceased) grandfather, a deceitful (and very deeply disturbed but equally pretty) girlfriend and haunting dreams conspire to suck the hope from him. The problem is not the others, though. It truly is Domenick. His litany of burdens becomes crippling because he is a LOSER of a character. The plot is incredible but Domenick is just tedious to watch as one thing after another happens to him and he becomes more and more impotent in his rage. His therapist, however, saves the day and it is no great surprise that 1000 pages of torment earns Domenick a picture-perfect and fully healed life. Of course, not everyone else survives the train wreck of a novel and the corpses stack up like a bad production of Hamlet. Even so, it is a good and serious novel by Wally Lamb and a vast improvement on that Schlock festival called She's Come Undone. He is probably an author to watch as he develops his craft.
Rating: 
Summary: Interesting at times...
Review: I ordered this book before realizing it was an Oprah's Book Club pick. I finished reading it about a month ago and it has taken me this long to decide whether or I not I liked it. Throughout the book there are times when it is interesting, amusing, boring, tedious and irritating. It is truly one of those books that left me feeling neither glad I had read it nor upset for wasting my time. I did have a hard time putting it down because I wanted to find out what was about to happen next. But when I would find out I was usually a little disappointed. So I would move on to the next (pick one: tragedy, problem, question) and keep reading until I knew the outcome of that one, and again would usually be a little disappointed. The writing style was smooth and easy to read although at times the dialogue with the therapist was a bit stilted. I can only imagine this was Lamb's way of illustrating the language and culture differences. I'm not usually one to have such tepid feelings about a book but I can honestly say that this one was neither exciting nor terrible; in my opinion it was very middle-of-the-road.
Rating:
Summary: a ciritcal darling that really packs a punch...
Review: At last, a critical darling of a novel I found myself unable to put down. I usually steer clear of any title with the Oprah's Book Club sticker on the cover, for fear of having to suffer through another ode to angst-ridden, small minded domesticity. But 'I Know This Much Is True' packed a genuine punch and had me flipping it's pages of highly readable prose as I found myself trapped in one of the most delicious places a reader can find themselves taken by a novel...the delimma of whether or not to love or despise the major characters. There is a certain fearlessness to this novel's scope which is lacking in most of contemporary fiction. The narrative takes numerous twists and turns, none of them dead ends, but remains anchored by the solid, yet conflicted first person voice of Dominick Birdsey. This perspective allows for articulate insight into the nature of mental illness and family, and allows for surprising moments of haunting, unpretentious imagery amidst an otherwise conversation ridden narrative. No fifth star for this one for several reasons. As the novel winds to it's conclusion, Wally Lamb engages in some monotonous repetition of theme. In the 700 page range of a 912 page novel, this repetition becomes dangerously boring. Also, "the-rush-to-wrap-things-up" nature of the final chapters struck me as a surprising dissapointment at the conclusion of a novel which had taken great pains to etch and articulate the emotional ambiguity of it's major characters.
Rating:
Summary: Can't put down!!
Review: This is a fantastic book! However reader beware..this isn't about pixie dust and beautiful faries..the book does throw the reader into the depressed world of Dominick Birdsey, brother of Thomas Birdsey who is a schizophrenic. But you really learn to love Dominick despite his rough edges. The manuscript about Dominick's grandfather is almost like reading two books in one...a fantastic tale of pain and secrecy. But be assured, despite a sad beginning you will feel satisfied by the end.
|
