(Beacon News, Jan. 18, Teresa Budasi)

My favorite of 2008 is the latest novel by Wally Lamb. A decade has passed since Lamb was doubly blessed by Oprah and shot to literary fame. In 1997, the talk show queen chose his first novel, “She’s Come Undone,” as her fourth Oprah’s Book Club selection. His follow-up, “I Know This Much Is True,” was chosen a year later.

So now, 10 years later, comes “The Hour I First Believed,” which supposes the life of a couple trying to put back the pieces of their lives in the wake of the Columbine High School tragedy. Books like this are my favorite kind to read — novels with long, sprawling chapters, where characters are thoughtfully drawn out with multiple, interconnecting story lines — so that’s why it tops my list. It’s a hefty volume, 700-plus pages, and I look forward to every single page turn. (Editor’s note: Sugar Grove resident Greg Zanis, who famously and controversially built and installed crosses near Columbine after the shootings, is mentioned in this fictionalized account.)

So now, 10 years later, comes “The Hour I First Believed,” which supposes the life of a couple trying to put back the pieces of their lives in the wake of the Columbine High School tragedy. Books like this are my favorite kind to read — novels with long, sprawling chapters, where characters are (more…)

(LJWorld.com, Dec. 1)

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 added the paperback edition of “She’s Come Undone” and Lamb’s 900-page second novel, “I Know This Much Is True,” in her Book Club, a bestowal that invariably sends the anointed novel on a rocket ride.

Although there are dozens of characters in Lamb’s new novel, it has at its center the cranky and disconnected Caelum Quirk and his wife, Maureen. Their marriage splinters over an infidelity. Seeking a new start, they move from Connecticut to Colorado. Caelum, a teacher, and Maureen, a nurse, each get jobs at Columbine High School. When Caelum is away, Maureen witnesses the 1999 rampage of Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold that left 15 dead and many more injured.

The tragedies and trials faced by Caelum and Maureen are contemporary, even the nonfictional ones. Deciding to graft the actual event, including the names of the victims, into his fictional account, was tricky. But, Lamb said, “I felt that as a high school teacher for 25 years I could put myself in those corridors and empathize.”

See Wally Lamb’s signed books at www.vjbooks.com

(Dallas Morning News, Nov. 23, Joy Tipping)

Wally Lamb

Wally Lamb’s readers must be among the standard-bearers of literary patience: It’s been 10 years since his last novel, I Know This Much Is True, although he has edited two books of stories from the women of York Correctional Institution in Connecticut, where he teaches writing workshops.

The author’s experiences with women inmates strongly influenced the new book, The Hour I First Believed, 700-plus extraordinary pages in which he explores the ramifications of violence, from the shootings at (more…)

(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.

(www.cleveland.com, Nov. 16, Janet Okoben)

Wally Lamb’s ‘The Hour I First Believed‘ is bleak but beautiful

Reading Wally Lamb’s new novel, his first in 10 years, is akin to putting on flannel pajamas during the first cold snap of the season.

Nothing fancy here. But what a comfort to get lost in Lamb’s characters. Just a few pages in, we remember how much there was to like about his previous books, “She’s Come Undone” and “I Know This Much Is True,” in the same way pulling on flannel after a long, hot summer can feel surprisingly good.

It seems that Lamb has taken most of the subjects that crossed his field of vision during the past decade and found them a place in “The Hour I First Believed.”

His specialty has always been writing beautifully in the voices of damaged (more…)

(www.boston.com, Nov. 3, Jan Gardner)

Ten years after his last book, Wally Lamb is back. I’m coming to him late but I found his new novel, “The Hour I First Believed,” out on Nov. 11, engrossing and heart-wrenching. I won’t say too much but it all begins with the Columbine shootings (Lamb quotes from the killers’ writings) and then it moves back and forth across a hundred-plus years, drawing on Dorothea Dix’s work as well as the ravages of Hurricane Katrina. Yes, it sprawls, but the center holds.

Lamb launches his national book tour next week at UConn-Storrs, where he has been both a student and a professor, then comes up to Brookline on Friday, Nov. 14.

(publishersweekly.com, Nov 10, Kevin Howell)

PW: Your original deadline was 2004. Were you worried when that deadline was approaching?

Wally Lamb: Oh yeah, there was worry all through this experience. I had a terrible time starting this book in 1999. The first year was spent spinning my wheels. As the approaching deadline neared, the story had taken hold but I knew I had a lot of work ahead. I’m a writer who can’t be rushed. My editor understood. So, the pressure came more from me than from HarperCollins. Concurrently, my elderly parents went into a long decline and eventually passed away. And I also had kids in the house who over the course of nine years grew up and began leaving the nest. (more…)