I Know This Much Is True
Announced June 18, 1998
About the Book"It's not just a book, it's a life experience," trumpeted Oprah about her selection, I Know This Much Is True. Faithful readers familiar with her phenomenally successful book club read Wally Lamb's stunning debut novel, She's Come Undone, back in February, 1997.
Now, this brilliantly talented writer returns with I Know This Much Is True. Set against the vivid panoply of twentieth-century America and filled with richly drawn, memorable characters, this deeply moving and thoroughly satisfying novel brings to light humanity's deepest needs and fears, our aloneness, our desire for love and acceptance, our struggle to survive at all costs. Joyous, mystical, and exquisitely written, I Know This Much Is True is an extraordinary reading experience that will leave no reader untouched.
"When you're the sane brother of a schizophrenic identical twin, the tricky thing about saving yourself is the blood it leaves on your hands — the little inconvenience of the look-alike corpse at your feet. And if you're into both survival of the fittest and being your brother's keeper — if you've promised your dying mother — then say so long to sleep and hello to the middle of the night. Grab a book or a beer. Get used to Letterman's gap-toothed smile of the absurd, or the view of the bedroom ceiling, or the indifference of random selection. Take it from a godless insomniac. Take it from the uncrazy twin — the guy who beat the biochemical rap."
Born in the waning moments of 1949 and the opening minutes of 1950, the twins Dominick and Thomas Birdsey are physical mirror images who grow into separate yet connected entities: the seemingly strong and protective yet fearful Dominick and the seemingly weak and sweet yet noble Thomas.
From childhood, Dominick fights for both separation and wholeness — and ultimately self-protection — in a house of fear dominated by Ray, their adoptive father, a spit-and-polish ex-Navy man who abuses his power over his stepsons whose biological father is a mystery.
Dominick's entire life has been compromised and constricted by anger and fear; by Thomas, the paranoid schizophrenic twin brother he both deeply loves and resents; by their adoptive father, Ray, and their long-suffering mother, Concettina, a timid woman with a harelip that made her shy and self-conscious — she holds a loose fist to her face to cover her defective mouth — her perpetual apology to the world for a birth defect over which she'd had no control.
But Dominick's talent for survival comes at an enormous cost, including the breakup of his marriage and it will be put to the ultimate test when Thomas commits an unthinkable act that threatens the tenuous balance of both his and Dominick's lives.
To save himself, Dominick must confront not only the dark secrets he has locked deep within himself but the sins of his ancestors — a quest that will lead him beyond the confines of his blue-collar New England town to the volcanic foothills of Sicily's Mount Etna, where his ambitious and vengefully proud grandfather and namesake Domennico Tempesta, was born.
Searching for answers, Dominick turns to the pages of his grandfather's handwritten memoir. Rendered with touches of magic realism, Domenico's fable-like tale — in which monkeys enchant and religious statues weep — becomes the old man's confession. Through this grandfather's life, Dominick learns that power, wrongly used, defeats the oppressor as well as the oppressed, and now, picking through the humble shards of his deconstructed life, he will search for the courage and love to forgive, to expiate his and his ancestors' transgressions, and finally to rebuild himself beyond the haunted shadow of his twin.
But Dominick's talent for survival comes at an enormous cost, including the breakup of his marriage and it will be put to the ultimate test when Thomas commits an unthinkable act that threatens the tenuous balance of both his and Dominick's lives.
To save himself, Dominick must confront not only the dark secrets he has locked deep within himself but the sins of his ancestors — a quest that will lead him beyond the confines of his blue-collar New England town to the volcanic foothills of Sicily's Mount Etna, where his ambitious and vengefully proud grandfather and namesake Domennico Tempesta, was born.
Searching for answers, Dominick turns to the pages of his grandfather's handwritten memoir. Rendered with touches of magic realism, Domenico's fable-like tale — in which monkeys enchant and religious statues weep — becomes the old man's confession. Through this grandfather's life, Dominick learns that power, wrongly used, defeats the oppressor as well as the oppressed, and now, picking through the humble shards of his deconstructed life, he will search for the courage and love to forgive, to expiate his and his ancestors' transgressions, and finally to rebuild himself beyond the haunted shadow of his twin.
About the Author
Wally Lamb is a nationally honored teacher, critically acclaimed writer and bestselling author. His new book, I Know This Much Is True (ReganBooks) was released in June 1998. His work also includes the #1 New York Times bestseller, She's Come Undone (Pocket Books;1992) which also hit USA Today, Los Angeles Times, Publishers Weekly and other national bestseller lists; published fiction, and non-fiction in The Missouri Review, Allure, USA Weekend, Northeast, The New York Times Magazine, and editor of the poetry collection, Always Begin Where You Are (McGraw Hill, 1979).
She's Come Undone was chosen as a finalist for the 1992 Los Angeles Times Book Awards' Art Seidenbaum Prize for first fiction. It was named a notable book of the year by numerous publications, including The New York Times Book Review and People. The book was also chosen by The Oprah Winfrey Show as a "Book Club" selection in early 1997, and is one of the bestselling titles chosen for that honor.
Lamb is the recipient of the 1998 Governor's Arts Award, State of Connecticut, a past recipient of the NEA grant for fiction and is a Missouri Review William Peden fiction prize winner.
He was the director of the Writing Center at the Norwich Free Academy, Norwich, Connecticut from 1989–1998, and is currently an Associate Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Connecticut's English Department. He holds a B.A. and an M.A. in Education from the University of Connecticut and an M.F.A. in Writing from Vermont College. Lamb lives in Connecticut with his wife and three sons.
Lamb, who is in the midst of a national book tour for I Know This Much Is True, has the remaining book store appearances upcoming on his schedule.
Wally Lamb is a nationally honored teacher, critically acclaimed writer and bestselling author. His new book, I Know This Much Is True (ReganBooks) was released in June 1998. His work also includes the #1 New York Times bestseller, She's Come Undone (Pocket Books;1992) which also hit USA Today, Los Angeles Times, Publishers Weekly and other national bestseller lists; published fiction, and non-fiction in The Missouri Review, Allure, USA Weekend, Northeast, The New York Times Magazine, and editor of the poetry collection, Always Begin Where You Are (McGraw Hill, 1979).
She's Come Undone was chosen as a finalist for the 1992 Los Angeles Times Book Awards' Art Seidenbaum Prize for first fiction. It was named a notable book of the year by numerous publications, including The New York Times Book Review and People. The book was also chosen by The Oprah Winfrey Show as a "Book Club" selection in early 1997, and is one of the bestselling titles chosen for that honor.
Lamb is the recipient of the 1998 Governor's Arts Award, State of Connecticut, a past recipient of the NEA grant for fiction and is a Missouri Review William Peden fiction prize winner.
He was the director of the Writing Center at the Norwich Free Academy, Norwich, Connecticut from 1989–1998, and is currently an Associate Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Connecticut's English Department. He holds a B.A. and an M.A. in Education from the University of Connecticut and an M.F.A. in Writing from Vermont College. Lamb lives in Connecticut with his wife and three sons.
Lamb, who is in the midst of a national book tour for I Know This Much Is True, has the remaining book store appearances upcoming on his schedule.
Favorite Books
So many books have altered my life in significant ways. Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye was a life raft bobbing on the choppy waters of my adolescence. In college, The Great Gatsby changed me from an art to an English major. Twenty-eight or 29 coverless, spine-split paperback copies of Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird became the rickety bridge between me and my very first class of turned-off, damned-if-they'd-read high school students. (I was 21 at the time; so were a few of my students!)
One summer I had the enormous good fortune to read, one right after another, Mary Gordon's Final Payments, Alice Walker's The Color Purple, and Carolyn M.Rodgers' rousing poetry collection, How I Got Ovah. The collective effect was galvanizing; like literary Supremes, these three writers jointly sang me an invitation to try to write, too. And soon after I'd started, John Updike's breathtaking story Packed Dirt, Churchgoing, a Dying Cat, a Traded Car (from his Pigeon Feathers collection) suggested to me that making stories could somehow make me a better person—that we are all, in a sense, works in progress. Each of the works I've mentioned is a first-person testament. For me it's all about voice: two souls — character and reader, speaker and listener — lost together in some spooky woods and trying to find their way out."
So many books have altered my life in significant ways. Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye was a life raft bobbing on the choppy waters of my adolescence. In college, The Great Gatsby changed me from an art to an English major. Twenty-eight or 29 coverless, spine-split paperback copies of Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird became the rickety bridge between me and my very first class of turned-off, damned-if-they'd-read high school students. (I was 21 at the time; so were a few of my students!)
One summer I had the enormous good fortune to read, one right after another, Mary Gordon's Final Payments, Alice Walker's The Color Purple, and Carolyn M.Rodgers' rousing poetry collection, How I Got Ovah. The collective effect was galvanizing; like literary Supremes, these three writers jointly sang me an invitation to try to write, too. And soon after I'd started, John Updike's breathtaking story Packed Dirt, Churchgoing, a Dying Cat, a Traded Car (from his Pigeon Feathers collection) suggested to me that making stories could somehow make me a better person—that we are all, in a sense, works in progress. Each of the works I've mentioned is a first-person testament. For me it's all about voice: two souls — character and reader, speaker and listener — lost together in some spooky woods and trying to find their way out."
Book Reviews
"...it never grapples with anything less than life's biggest questions.... Lamb clearly aims to be a modern-day Dostoyevsky with a pop sensibility."
— New York Times Book Review
"... the novel quite deliberately assumes a darkly fated dimension that transforms an un-happy working-class New England family into mythic world archetypes. You may wish that its structure were sleeker and its resolution less tidy, but you couldn't ask for a more beguiling summer read." B+
— Entertainment Weekly
"Wally Lamb can lie down with the literary lions at will: he's that gifted.... This novel does what good fiction should do — it informs our hearts as well as our minds of the complexities involved in the 'simple' act of living a human life."
— The Tennessean (Nashville)
"Crib death and schizophrenia would hardly seem the building blocks of great fiction, but those are exactly what Lamb makes them in this follow-up to his bestselling first novel, 1992's She's Come Undone. Lamb's new work is a gratifying saga of loss and redemption."
— Amy Waldman for People Magazine
"Mr. Lamb gives his vociferous heroine truly heroic proportions, in "... readers looking for the qualities Winfrey and her viewers seem to love best – accessible, heart-felt, family-oriented fiction that's easy on the brain – will not be disappointed."
— Elizabeth Gleick, Time MagazineReview
"If Lamb's touch is heavy when it comes to Dominick's self-awareness, the author also has a way of letting his character's simpler emotions speak for themselves; accordingly, we root for Dominick as he gropes from anguish to peace, and this, in the end, is what ultimately keeps us engaged. It may not obscure the novel's considerable weaknesses, but it is a substantial compensation.
— The Los Angeles Times Sunday Book Review, Jean Hanff Korelitz
"...it never grapples with anything less than life's biggest questions.... Lamb clearly aims to be a modern-day Dostoyevsky with a pop sensibility."
— New York Times Book Review
"... the novel quite deliberately assumes a darkly fated dimension that transforms an un-happy working-class New England family into mythic world archetypes. You may wish that its structure were sleeker and its resolution less tidy, but you couldn't ask for a more beguiling summer read." B+
— Entertainment Weekly
"Wally Lamb can lie down with the literary lions at will: he's that gifted.... This novel does what good fiction should do — it informs our hearts as well as our minds of the complexities involved in the 'simple' act of living a human life."
— The Tennessean (Nashville)
"Crib death and schizophrenia would hardly seem the building blocks of great fiction, but those are exactly what Lamb makes them in this follow-up to his bestselling first novel, 1992's She's Come Undone. Lamb's new work is a gratifying saga of loss and redemption."
— Amy Waldman for People Magazine
"Mr. Lamb gives his vociferous heroine truly heroic proportions, in "... readers looking for the qualities Winfrey and her viewers seem to love best – accessible, heart-felt, family-oriented fiction that's easy on the brain – will not be disappointed."
— Elizabeth Gleick, Time MagazineReview
"If Lamb's touch is heavy when it comes to Dominick's self-awareness, the author also has a way of letting his character's simpler emotions speak for themselves; accordingly, we root for Dominick as he gropes from anguish to peace, and this, in the end, is what ultimately keeps us engaged. It may not obscure the novel's considerable weaknesses, but it is a substantial compensation.
— The Los Angeles Times Sunday Book Review, Jean Hanff Korelitz
Reviews
"...it never grapples with anything less than life's biggest questions.... Lamb clearly aims to be a modern-day Dostoyevsky with a pop sensibility."
— New York Times Book Review "... the novel quite deliberately assumes a darkly fated dimension that transforms an un-happy working-class New England family into mythic world archetypes. You may wish that its structure were sleeker and its resolution less tidy, but you couldn't ask for a more beguiling summer read." B+
— Entertainment Weekly "Wally Lamb can lie down with the literary lions at will: he's that gifted.... This novel does what good fiction should do — it informs our hearts as well as our minds of the complexities involved in the 'simple' act of living a human life."
— The Tennessean (Nashville) "Crib death and schizophrenia would hardly seem the building blocks of great fiction, but those are exactly what Lamb makes them in this follow-up to his bestselling first novel, 1992's She's Come Undone. Lamb's new work is a gratifying saga of loss and redemption."
— Amy Waldman for People Magazine "Mr. Lamb gives his vociferous heroine truly heroic proportions, in "... readers looking for the qualities Winfrey and her viewers seem to love best – accessible, heart-felt, family-oriented fiction that's easy on the brain – will not be disappointed."
— Elizabeth Gleick, Time MagazineReview "If Lamb's touch is heavy when it comes to Dominick's self-awareness, the author also has a way of letting his character's simpler emotions speak for themselves; accordingly, we root for Dominick as he gropes from anguish to peace, and this, in the end, is what ultimately keeps us engaged. It may not obscure the novel's considerable weaknesses, but it is a substantial compensation.
— The Los Angeles Times Sunday Book Review, Jean Hanff Korelitz
— New York Times Book Review "... the novel quite deliberately assumes a darkly fated dimension that transforms an un-happy working-class New England family into mythic world archetypes. You may wish that its structure were sleeker and its resolution less tidy, but you couldn't ask for a more beguiling summer read." B+
— Entertainment Weekly "Wally Lamb can lie down with the literary lions at will: he's that gifted.... This novel does what good fiction should do — it informs our hearts as well as our minds of the complexities involved in the 'simple' act of living a human life."
— The Tennessean (Nashville) "Crib death and schizophrenia would hardly seem the building blocks of great fiction, but those are exactly what Lamb makes them in this follow-up to his bestselling first novel, 1992's She's Come Undone. Lamb's new work is a gratifying saga of loss and redemption."
— Amy Waldman for People Magazine "Mr. Lamb gives his vociferous heroine truly heroic proportions, in "... readers looking for the qualities Winfrey and her viewers seem to love best – accessible, heart-felt, family-oriented fiction that's easy on the brain – will not be disappointed."
— Elizabeth Gleick, Time MagazineReview "If Lamb's touch is heavy when it comes to Dominick's self-awareness, the author also has a way of letting his character's simpler emotions speak for themselves; accordingly, we root for Dominick as he gropes from anguish to peace, and this, in the end, is what ultimately keeps us engaged. It may not obscure the novel's considerable weaknesses, but it is a substantial compensation.
— The Los Angeles Times Sunday Book Review, Jean Hanff Korelitz
How to Write Your Own Review
We want to know what you think of this book! Read the suggestions for writing a review below, then post your review on the Oprah's Book Club message board. Bookmark this page and check back here often to see if your review has been featured!
1. How did this book touch your life? Can you relate to it on any level? What do you believe is the message the author is trying to convey to the reader?
2. Describe the character development in I Know This Much Is True. How does Wally Lamb use language and imagery to bring the characters to life?
3. In your opinion, is the book entertaining? Explain why or why not.
4. What did you learn from this book? Was it educational in any way?
5. In conclusion, summarize your reading experience with I Know This Much Is True. What grade would you give this novel?
6. If you enjoyed this book, what other books would you recommend to fellow readers?
Above all else, have a good time putting your thoughts and opinions down in print! The best reviews are those that you would like to listen to or would give a friend.
Featured Review
Posted by tommyboy10: I Know This Much is Brilliant
This book blew me away. The main character goes through so many tragedies that you wonder if he—or anyone for that matter—could go on. ... I can't say enough about this book or Wally Lamb I truly believe that he is one of the best writers in the world today.
We want to know what you think of this book! Read the suggestions for writing a review below, then post your review on the Oprah's Book Club message board. Bookmark this page and check back here often to see if your review has been featured!
1. How did this book touch your life? Can you relate to it on any level? What do you believe is the message the author is trying to convey to the reader?
2. Describe the character development in I Know This Much Is True. How does Wally Lamb use language and imagery to bring the characters to life?
3. In your opinion, is the book entertaining? Explain why or why not.
4. What did you learn from this book? Was it educational in any way?
5. In conclusion, summarize your reading experience with I Know This Much Is True. What grade would you give this novel?
6. If you enjoyed this book, what other books would you recommend to fellow readers?
Above all else, have a good time putting your thoughts and opinions down in print! The best reviews are those that you would like to listen to or would give a friend.
Featured Review
Posted by tommyboy10: I Know This Much is Brilliant
This book blew me away. The main character goes through so many tragedies that you wonder if he—or anyone for that matter—could go on. ... I can't say enough about this book or Wally Lamb I truly believe that he is one of the best writers in the world today.
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