Wally Lamb Review – The Hour I First Believed
(www.startribune.com, Nov. 15, Claude Peck)
In his first novel in 10 years, he sweeps up history, violence and family heartbreak. Dark stuff, but he’s also open to the possibility of redemption.
Wally Lamb’s new novel, 450,000 copies of which have just arrived in bookstores, is big enough to threaten Thanksgiving and maybe even Christmas, as readers ignore turkey basting and tinsel tossing to turn the 723 wide-ranging, heavily plotted pages of “The Hour I First Believed.”
Lamb writes big books. And popular ones. Oprah Winfrey famously pulled an all-nighter reading Lamb’s first novel, “She’s Come Undone,” the painful, funny coming-of-age saga of Dolores Price. She later included its paperback version and Lamb’s 900-page second novel, “I Know This Much Is True,” in (more…)