Show Me 5 Saturday: I Know This Much Is True by Wally Lamb

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1 Book you read and/or reviewed: I Know This Much Is True by Wally Lamb

2 Words that describe the book: Twinness and identity

3 Settings where it took place or characters you met:

1. Setting: Three Rivers, Connecticut, modern times
   
2. Dominick Birdsey—the narrator and 40-year-old house painter with a failed marriage (that still haunts him) who is burdened with the label of "normal" twin. Dominick spends his life struggling to find his own way in the world yet always feels shackled to his twin brother Thomas
   
3. Thomas Birdsey—Dominick's twin brother who suffers from schizophrenia. The novel opens with Thomas hacking off his hand at a public library. (You don't get much more of a gut-wrenching opening than that!)
   

4 Things you liked and/or disliked about it:

1. I liked how Wally Lamb is exceptionally talented at creating unforgettable, unique and consistent voices for his narrators. Dominick Birdsey is no exception.
   
2. I disliked being reminded of the tangents that Lamb took in The Hour I First Believed—creating yet another "story within a story" when Dominick discovers and reads his grandfather's diary, which might hold the key to some Birdsey family secrets. (For me, this part of the book could have been edited down severely.)
   
3. I liked how Wally Lamb writes these big, fat books (this one is 912 pages), but the reader is compulsively drawn along in the story.
4. I both liked and disliked how many plots Wally Lamb weaves into this book. On the one hand, you just don't know what will befall Dominick and his family next and that made me want to keep reading. On the other hand, this story is stuffed full of tragedies and events that seem almost too much to happen to one family/character. It began to stretch the bounds of believability for me.
   

5 Stars or less for your rating?

I'm giving the book 3.5 stars. Once again, I continue to struggle with Wally Lamb. I had a very similar reaction to this book as I did to The Hour I First Believed—I think the author crammed too much in (although I did find this book to be more focused). I feel that Wally Lamb has the skills and the talent to write the perfect novel—he brings you inside Dominick's head so fully and completely—yet I feel he needs to edit more and cut out some of the ideas he has for his characters. To me, the most compelling aspect of this book was the twinness of Dominick and Thomas and how they both struggled to become separate individuals but were still bound together so tightly. As with The Hour I First Believed, I recommend the book but still feel it has some major flaws. Focus, Wally Lamb, focus! Resist the urge to fit everything into your character's lives!

Why and Where I Got The Book

I got this book because I wanted to compare it to The Hour I First Believed, which I read and reviewed earlier this year and found wanting. I bought the Kindle edition from Amazon.

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