Mid-Read Review of The Hour I First Believed

A few novelists tackle the big ideas--in a big way. Wally Lamb's latest novel is doing just that (I am about half-way through it). I still remember how moved I was by his novel I Know This Much Is True. It was at once a family drama and a meditation on so many of the big issues: race, tolerance, and mental illness. 

The Hour I First Believed is equally powerful. Using the Columbine massacre as a factual conceit around which he can weave a story about a woman's descent into despair, drug addiction, and overwhelming guilt, Lamb also weaves in a meditation on violence (all kinds, not just the kind Eric and Dylan visited upon their victims). He explores the way that people deal with grief, rage, incarceration, abandonment, and marital discord. And that's not all. About half way into the tale, his narrator (written with great truth and vigor in first person) meets a couple who escaped the ninth ward during Katrina. 

He makes some scathing observations about modern psychology along the way, as well. In the first half of the book, the details about the Columbine shootings are haunting, frightening and nightmare-inducing. This book is a steak dinner, not a bowl of potato chips. Take your time with it; let it seep in and work on you for a while.