Although this book is a chunkster at 897 pages, it was so engaging that I didn't want to put it down. Thomas and Dominick Birdsey are identical twins with very different personalities. The book opens in 1990 with Thomas, a paranoid schizophrenic, cutting off his hand as a protest against the Gulf War as he chants the Biblical verse "...and if thy right hand offend thee, cut it off and cast it from thee...". After Thomas is put into a maximum security ward at the state mental hospital, Dominick tries to have his brother moved to a different environment.

Dominick loves his disturbed brother, but feels that Thomas has been a heavy anchor tied to him, holding Dominick down so he's barely able to breathe. He's had to protect the gentle Thomas his whole life. Meanwhile Dominick is trying to cope with his own life falling apart, and is holding a lot of hurt and anger inside. They both are trying to make sense of a childhood with an abusive stepfather and a passive mother. The book goes back to a third generation in the form of a rather melodramatic journal about the life of the men's grandfather, an immigrant from Sicily. The twins' parents are products of poor parenting, and problems continue to the next generation.

The book incorporates religion, mental illness, abuse, divorce, death, parenting, and infidelity into the story. Written in the late 1990s, it also explores issues of that time such as the war, racism, and Native American casinos. Some of the best parts of the book are the conversations between Dominick and Dr Patel. Dr Patel had been counseling Thomas, but soon realized that "there are two young men lost in the woods" and added Dominick to her private practice. Wally Lamb writes great dialogue in a conversational tone, giving the reader the feeling they are having a heart-to-heart talk with the character. Incidents involving Dominick's best friend, fast-talking car salesman Leo, add humor to the book. "I Know This Much Is True" is a page-turner, and is highly recommended.

This is my favorite book ever.

I was reading it while I lived in New York, during the 2 weeks I was holed up in my apartment in New Jersey recovering from the shock of 9/11 . . . adjusting to life all alone in a big city with just my baby daughter (who, at that time, I felt some ambivalence about) . . . missing my older two children . . . and mostly learning how to live after extracting myself from a rigid and controlling church experience. I felt very much like I was learning how to live with a consolation prize as a life. I was very, very lost at that time.

The protagonist had also had his life turned upside down by the death of his baby daughter, his wife leaving him and his brother's suicide. The story weaves it's way back and forth from his present to his past and back again as you piece together the story of his life and learn how he got to where he is.

In the end, he's restored.

When I finished the last page of this book, I cried because my time with him was over. I tried to read another book by Wally Lamb but it wasn't the same. I love, love, love the main character in I Know This Much Is True.

$1.99 Kindle special today! This was a GREAT PAGE TURNING STORY!!!!
Just sayin. :).
I’d buy it for $1.99 ... but I already own it.
Sometimes a reader is simply looking for a stay to lose yourself in. This book fits that need.


This was another on of those 5 star books that I guess I never rated!

I wasn't always active on Goodreads you know --
There was a time I read before this site....lol

I don't know what to say. This has been one of the most realistic, heartbreaking, and well-written books that I've ever read in my life. The characters were diverse, had distinct voices and unique personalities. Serious issues were discussed, including but not limited to: mental illness, racism, toxic masculinity, sexism, abuse, and war. None of them was handled lightly and most were expanded upon and masterfully portrayed.
I can easily say that I Know This Much is True is a new book on my 'favourites' shelf.
900 pages in 5 days. I'm half-dead :'D

“That’s the trouble with survival of the fittest, isn’t it, Dominick? The corpse at your feet. That little inconvenience.”

“He’s the sick one,”I reminded her. “I’m the other one.”
“Yes, yes,”she said. “The tough guy. The not-so-nice twin. Which doesn’t necessarily make you well, Dominick. Does it? Look around, my friend. Here you are, in therapy.”
She saw it over and over again in her male patients, she said—it could probably qualify as an epidemic among American men: this stubborn reluctance to embrace our wholeness—this stoic denial that we had come from our mothers as well as our fathers. It was sad, really tragic. So wasteful of human lives, as our wars and drive-by shootings kept proving to us; all one had to do was turn on CNN or CBS News.
And yet, it was comic, too—the lengths most men went to to prove that they were “tough guys.” The gods must look down upon us, laughing and crying simultaneously.

She reached for my hand. Squeezed it. “I learned something very useful today,” she said.
“Yeah? What’s that?”
“I learned that there are two young men lost in the woods. Not one. Two.”
She gave me one of those half-smiles of hers—one of those non-committal jobs. “I may never find one of the young men,” she said.
“He has been gone so long. The odds, I’m afraid, may be against it. But as for the other, I may have better luck. The other young man may be calling me.”

Most of the people hanging around outside their houses were black or Spanish—not exactly the kind of neighborhood you’d figure a racist like Dell would live in. But it was typical, according to my sociology teacher. The biggest bigots were the ones who felt most directly threatened by the “underclass.” The ones who felt the most moved in on.


I must have walked for a mile, mile and a half, just thinking about shit: how it must feel to be way up there, looking down at the earth. Not being a part of it. Taking in the place, whole. That was the thing, man. That’s what was hard: we were all moon walkers, in a way. Me. Leo. Ralph Drinkwater. My brother. Even my stupid stepfather, locked in a three-against-one with Ma and Thomas and me. Even all the clowns back there at the Dial-Tone Lounge, getting loaded so they could get up the nerve to try and fuck some girl—any girl—tether themselves to someone, even for a couple of minutes in the backseat of someone’s car. For a couple of seconds, everything was all clear. It all made sense. Who was that guy we’d read in my philosophy class last semester? That existentialism guy? He was right. Every one of us was alone. Even if you were someone’s identical twin. I mean, why had Thomas gotten up in the middle of the night and run those laps around the dorm? None of it made any sense, man, that was why. Because the whole freaking world was absurd. Because man was existentially alone...


“How did I feel? Oh, I guess I felt . . . like a good, red-blooded American.”
“Yes? Explain, please.”
“Keep them damn minorities down, boys. Put ’em on the cleanup crew. Survival of the fittest.”
“You’re being ironic, yes?”
“You know much about American history, Doc? What we did to the Indians? The slaves?”
“I’m afraid I’m not grasping your point, Dominick.”
“My point is: who the hell do you think those three white cops were going to believe that night—a couple of white kids or the dope-peddling black Indian? The radical queer? I mean, you got to hand it to Leo. It was a little over the top, maybe, but it worked. Right? I mean, stoned or not, it was a brilliant defense.”

“I just . . . It’s painful. I don’t see the point.”
“The point is this: that the stream of memory may lead you to the river of understanding. And understanding, in turn, may be a tributary to the river of forgiveness. Perhaps, Dominick, you have yet to emerge fully from the pond where you swam that morning so long ago. And perhaps, when you do, you will no longer look into the water and see the reflection of a son of a bitch.”

I looked out, again, at the rushing water.
“Life is a river,” she repeated. “Only in the most literal sense are we born on the day we leave our mother’s womb. In the larger, truer sense, we are born of the past—connected to its fluidity, both genetically and experientially.”She folded her hands together as if praying to what we saw below. “So, that is my opinion, my friend. Should you throw your ancestry into the wood stove? Of course not. Should you keep reading it, even if it takes away your sleep? Yes, by all means. Read your grandfather’s story, Dominick. Jump into the river. And if it upsets you, come in and tell me why.”
On the way out of her office, I got a quick glimpse of her next appointment: big, burly guy—work boots, hooded sweatshirt. We gave each other a jerky half-nod for a hello. Another “tough guy” in therapy, I thought. A fellow member of the walking wounded.


“I thought . . . I thought when I came in here and saw this Kleenex box that you had them on hand for, I don’t know, hysterical housewives or something. Women whose husbands just dumped them. I feel like a jerk.”
“Grief has no gender, Mr. Birdsey,” she said.
I took another tissue. Blew my nose again. “Is that what this is? Grief?”
“Why wouldn’t you grieve, Mr. Birdsey? Your twin brother is, as you said, an abandoned house. If no one is home, then someone is missing. So you grieve.”
I stuffed the used tissue into my shirt pocket. Handed her back the box. “Yeah, but you’d think by now. . . . You figure you got a lid on things and then. . . .”
“Mr. Birdsey, human beings are not like—oh, those plastic containers—what are they called? The ones Americans buy at parties?”
“At parties? . . . Tupperware, you mean?”
“Yes, yes. That’s it. People are not like Tupperware, with their lids on securely. Nor should they be, although the more I work with American men, the more I see it is their perceived ideal. Which is nonsense, really. Very unhealthy, Mr. Birdsey. Not something to aspire to at all. Never.”


I believe that both your brother’s religiosity and his wholehearted belief in heroes and villains may be his brave but futile attempt to make the world orderly and logical. It’s a noble struggle, in a sense, given the chaos his disease has put him up against. At least, that’s one way of interpreting it.”
“Noble? What’s so noble about it?”
“Because he is struggling to cure himself, Dominick. To rid himself of what must be his gravest fear: chaos. If he can somehow order the world, save the world, then he can save himself. That was his motivation when he removed his hand in the library, was it not? To sacrifice himself? To stop the destruction that war inevitably brings? Your brother is a very sick man, Dominick, but also a very good one and, I would venture to say, in some ways, even a noble one. I hope that gives you some small comfort.”


“I know I made mistakes with you two,” he said. “With him, especially. That day of the funeral, there? Afterward—back at the house? You weren’t accusing me of anything that I hadn’t already accused myself of. . . . I just never understood that kid. Me and him, we were like oil and water. . . . I hadn’t grown up with a father, see? All I knew was that it was a tough world out there. I figured that was the one thing I could do for you two: toughen you up a little, so that you could take whatever sucker punches life was going to throw at you. . . .‘They’re just little boys, Ray,’ she used to say to me all the time. But I didn’t see it. I was pigheaded about it, I guess. And, of course, I knew neither of you two liked me that much. Had me pegged as the bad guy all the time. The guy who wrecked everyone’s fun. Sometimes you three would be laughing at something, and I’d walk into the room, and bam! three long faces.”
“It was your temper,” I said. “We were afraid of you.”
He nodded. “I have a bad temper. I know I do. It was because of what I’d come from. I was mad at the world, I guess. . . . But Jesus, I’d get so mad at her when she tried to run interference for him all
the time. That used to drive me up the ever-loving wall. . . . And, of course, that day I come home and found the two of them up there, him in that foolish hat, those high-heel shoes . . .
“I failed him—I know that. Probably failed the both of you. Right?”
I couldn’t answer him. Jesus, he’d been brutal to us. But he’d been there. . . . He’d told Ma her mouth was just as kissable as anyone else’s.
“Things get clearer when you’re older,” he said. “Of course, by then it’s too late.”


The office was handsome. Huge. Cathedral ceiling with exposed beams, floor-to-ceiling stone fireplace that faced an entire wall of glass. Jesus, what a life he’d had. His sister gets murdered, his mother goes off the deep end. And then that scummy business out at Dell Weeks’s house—posing for dirty pictures just so’s he’d have a place to stay. But he had declared who he was all the way through: Well, I’m Wequonnoc Indian. So I guess not all of us got annihilated.. . . You guys ought to read Soul on Ice! Really! That book tells it like it is! . . . He’d been crapped on his whole life—had scrubbed toilets down at the psycho-prison for a living . . . and had still managed to
be a good man. To rise up out of the ashes. And now, he’d arrived at this big, beautiful room. This big, brand-new building. He’d come, at long, long last, into his own.

I am not a smart man, particularly, but one day, at long last, I stumbled from the dark woods of my own, and my family’s, and my country’s past, holding in my hands these truths: that love grows from the rich loam of forgiveness; that mongrels make good dogs; that the evidence of God exists in the roundness of things.
This much, at least, I’ve figured out. I know this much is true.

In the first few chapters I would have given this a 5. Interesting plot, but way too long and ridiculous. The plot twists got more and more far-fetched. A page-turner--have to give it that--but by the 500th page (there are 900+) I started skipping around (too many fragmented stories everywhere, between the flashbacks and the entire journal of the narrator's grandfather) just to find out what was going to happen, without all the extra details. The interaction among characters was intriguing, but it got to the point where many were downright unlikable/unbelievable, thanks to their outrageous/disgusting actions.

This book is loved by many but I am not among them. The premise: identical twins only one of whom is schizophrenic, attracted me to this book. However the portrayal of schizophrenia was not 100% accurate which spoiled the book for me. On top of that I did not like the mixed up brother, abusive step-father, horrific grandfather, weak mother, betraying wife, sick brother, or any other of the unsavory characters. If I cannot root for at least one character (no matter how flawed) I cannot root for the book either.

Wally Lamb's second novel, I Know This Much Is True, was probably a result of the success of his first effort - She's Come Undone, which was selected by Oprah for her book club four years after its initial publication in 1992. His sophomore effort, published in 1998, also got stamped with Oprah's round seal - this can be considered either a blessing or a curse, but one thing is certain: it helps to gain readership, and a lot of it. Oprah is acknowledged for that, and is thanked for her help in the acknowledgments section - albeit among dozens of other people Lamb deemed important, from his publisher and through his teachers students. Even the morning crew at the Sugar Shack Bakery gets a shout out. I guess the bakery had to be acknowledged, as anyone writing such a long novel is sure to get the munchies every now and then.

I Know This Much Is True is the story of two identical twin brothers - Dominick and Thomas. Born minutes apart, but in different decades - the dusk of 1949 and dawn of 1950 - the Birdsey brothers are physical reflections of one another, but develop distinctly different identities: Dominick is bold and aggressive, while Thomas is meek and mild - and develops paranoid schizophrenia. Set in the fictional small town of Three Rivers in Connecticut (which is based on Lamb's hometown of Norwich is the same state), the novel opens with Thomas being admitted to the state psychiatric hospital's maximum security ward after he committed an act of horrible self-harm in the local library, convicted that it will stop the Gulf War from happening (the book opens in October of 1990). What follows is a lenghty family saga, narrated by Dominick, who fights for his brother's sanity - and his own.

What follows is a sweeping saga of the past and present, narrated mostly in the first person by Dominick, who equally protects and despises his minimally younger, paranoid brother. Given the fact that both are in their 40's at the beginning, flashbacks are used liberally to keep the plot moving and suspense in its proper place. There's also a story within a story - Dominick's mother gives him his grandfather's memoir as a gift, which conveniently contains his history as a determined Italian immigrant, and which then is presented alternately with Dominick's first person narration when the flashback material runs out. The New York Times Book review stated that "Lamb clearly aims to be a modern-day Dostoyevsky with a pop sensibility", so the novel contains a whole lot of digressions into various fields: psychology, religion, consumerism, treatment of Native Americans, life in contemporary United States and its foreign policy. But the focus is less on Dostoevsky and more on the pop, and although the digressions are many they are rarely deep and can be swallowed down in one gulp.

Dominick is an unlikable narrator who comes out as perpetually angry and irritated, and from his flashbacks it's clear that he's kind of an asshole. When Dominick meets Thomas's psychiatrist, Dr. Patel, in order to stop his transfer - which he rightly thinks will only further his paranoia - he becomes her patient himself and undergoes a psychoanalysis of sorts. To resolve his own conflicts Dominick must confront his own past, Dr. Patel encourages, which is a neat way of setting the stage for some flashback material from the 50's all the way to the present. These therapeutic sessions with Dr. Patel help the readers warm up to Dominick as they marvel at the horrorshow which Wally Lamb prepared for him, including but not limited to: a father he never knew, an abusive stepfather and a mother who he felt loved the other child more, cross-dressing with a smell of incest (in the attic), sibling cruelty, substance abuse, child pornography, rape and dead babies - luckily there's no rape of dead babies, but at this point I would not be too surprised. It's no wonder adult Dominick turned out to be at best a conflicted individual, and also leads a life which can be described as relatively grim and unpleasant - not really enjoying his job, feeling angry towards the wife who divorced him and trying to make up for the loss by getting it on with a hot gym instructor (who has her own seedy past), while still feeling responsible for his brother - now a grown man, but with a brain full of classic paranoid delusions. He loves Thomas and hates him, at the same time. Sympatheric might be a too strong of a word - Dominick's angry voice becomes understandable. His account becomes compelling and draws one in, and like spectactors at a trainwreck it's difficult to try to stop looking. There's a great scene where young Dominick reminisces how he realized that he and his brother are not the same person, and I felt that that's where their trouble began - they were not the same and one wished that they were, while the other did not.

Approxmately 3/4 through the novel, at the moment when Wally Lamb had my attention he felt the need to make Dominick read his grandfather's memoir - which got lost and then conveniently found just at the right moment. The memoir is written by "Domenico Tempesta, a man of humble beginnings" and is a story of self-success written by the man himself - for posterity. Immediately it becomes obvious that Domenico the elder was an enormous ass who desired only success and did not mind leaving his mother in the Old Country to pursue success in America - at any cost. Domininck hates this man, and it's difficult not to share his contempt for the man who is determined to get what he wants and desires - no matter what would be its price.
The huge problem with the memoir section is that - aside from being an enormous and lenghty act of narrative exposition, which could just as well have been only alluded to and summarized on a few pages instead of continuing to go on for around two hundred - it's that it's almost ridiculously bad. A large part of that is intentional and explained - elderly Domenico was full of delusions of grandeur, and Dominick had to get the thing translated from Italian - and was told that large parts were written in distinctly Sicilian dialect, and left untranslated for lack of English equivalent and also emphasis of authenticity. But the parody screams intentional from the first sentence, and has nothing of the melifluous nature of the Italian language in its style - the only Italian thing about it are the untranslated and italicized words, which are words any human can at least guess the meaning of - unless you haven't seen The Godfather and have no clue what Omerta might mean and did not know that zuppa is a cousin of soup, but even if I don't think anyone will have a problem with the bambino's and signora's of which there are plenty (I think Lamb spares us Domenico talking about the pizza).

But the funniest thing lies in the details. In elderly Domenico's memoir one of the characters is called Ciccolina, ans is "a bowlegged old butcher-woman burdened with a hunchback and breasts that hung from her like a big sacks of semolina". Sad sight, isn't it? But if you'll add just one "i", you'll find yourself looking at a Cicciolina. Doesn't ring a bell? Prepare for an interesting trivia. Cicciolina is the stage name of Ilona Staller, who was born in 1952 and is arguably Italy's best known adult film actress - her fame spread (now that's a word) across the continent, and here in Poland her name became a slangword for a big-breasted female (although it has fallen out of use - or perhaps I've grown up, though I still found it impossible not to make this connection, so perhaps I did not). Aside from having a career in adult entertainment, Cicciolina also entered the world of politics - starting in 1979 as a candidate for Lista del Sole, Italy's Green Party. In 1985 she switched to Parto Radicale, the Italian Radical Party, and was elected to the Italian Parliament in 1987, serving there till the end of her term in 1991, after which she was not reelected. She was famous for not moving away from her career and continuing to produce hardcore porn while serving in the parliament, and delivering political speeches with one breasts exposed. When journalists asked her if she is not concerned about her actions undermining her credibility, she said: "My breasts have never done anyone any harm, while bin Laden's war has caused thousands of victims". She was, of course, damn right.
In 1991, a year after Thomas in the book-world mutiliates himself to stop the Gulf War, Cicciolina also offered to make a sacrifice to stop the war - she offered to give herself to Saddam Hussein "in exchange for world peace" (Saddam did not accept). She renewed her offer in the tumultuous 2002, when Iraq was being suspected of possessing weapons of mass destruction, saying: "I would do it holding my nose and closing my eyes. I would do it for peace". Again, Saddam did not accept - and the situation escalated into another war. In 2006, she offered to give herself to Osama Bin Laden in return for him giving up terrorism. "It is time someone did something about Bin Laden, and I am ready to do it. I am ready to make a deal", she said: "he can have me in exchange for an end to his tyranny". She accurately pointed out that Bin Laden could learn from Hussein's mistakes - but he too did not take Cicciolina up on her offer, and troops kept coming. One might think that with recent polls showing the famous Silvio Berlusconi being tied with other candidates for the Italian PM, he will indeed win the office and La Cicciolina will come out of retirement, once again selflessly promoting peace and humanitarian efforts for the world which could certainly use more love.

But I digress. Even with the memoir's hopelessly bad narrative (which even Dominick dreads reading, although it's his grandpa's history) the main storyline moves smoothly and contains a few emotional bombs, which continue to keep falling on poor Dominick - it's like eating from a pack of chips: we know that the stuff is essentially bad for us and that for every chip there's a whole lot of air, and that our fingers get greasy - but we keep reaching in nonetheless, and crunching the smooth bastards down till they're gone. Munch munch munch munch! But then, as the novel nears the end, everything goes horribly wrong and it almost made me drop the rating to two stars instead of three. Here's what happens:

Everything gets resolved! Every loose end gets tied in the most incredibly unlikely way possible. I can understand an author feeling sympathy for the characters whom he had given a rough life and wanting them to feel peace, if only at the end, but this string of coincidences working in their favor is ridiculous. Not only the old bastard Ray gets his redemption by planting the tulips - after all this time? Always! - he also gets his leg amputated to get a good dose of sympathy. But the sudden character reversal and even the manipulation is not bad. Even Dominick learning the real identity of his father is not bad - but the identity of his father is. It turns out that Dominick is the cousin of Ralph Drinkwater, the indian kid - which in itself wouldn't be so terribly trashy, if Ralph did not just start to benefit from being a Wequonnoc Indian, and being a part of the thriving casino enterprise. Life sucked for Ralph for so long, and at the end he happens to be on the winning side - and it just so happens that Dominick is also in for the ride, and immediately embraces his newly found Wequonnoc ancestry (and the benefits). To make it worse, Dominick gets back with Dessa, the wife who left him after she lost the baby and he ot a vasectomy without telling her - she conveniently broke up with whatshisname, who was described by Dominick as a good guy, for no reason other than to set her up to get back with Dominick - which she does, and it just so happens that Dominick's previous girlfriend, the young and troubled Joy, not only became a mother but also got diagnosed with HIV and Dominick just so happens to be the only person in the world that she trusts to take care of her baby in case she passes away - which she does. Granted, it takes a couple years and she did try to convince Dominick that he is the father of her baby before - which he wasn't for obvious reasons - but it just so happens that the baby happens to be a little angel and hits it off with Dessa, just happening to be the child she and Dominick lacked. By this time I was reasonably sure that Jesus himself would descend from Heavens above and resurect Thomas, thank him for his service and give him back his life and sanity - or rapture a few people before blowing the planet up, or just blow it up anyway because I sure as hell didn't care what happened. Where is Annie Wilkes when you need her? He didn't get out of the COCKADOODIE CAR!)

To sum up: I Know This Much Is True is an overly long novel, with two interesting main characters who cover for the rest of the cast, providing reasonable entertainment without testing the waters too much, but crumbling almost completely in the third act, all of its impact positively evaporating and leaving its readers in wonder at how the author managed to mess up so badly with something so full of promise. Instead of being a memorable work of fiction which I hoped it would be, it was a long and often entertaining but ultimately disappointing novel. I was eyeing Lamb's recent novel, The Hour I First Believed, but the reaction seems to be mixed. It does sound interesting (I was very interested in the Columbine shooting) - but so did this one, and while I do not regret reading it its flaws make me less eager to read more works by Wally Lamb.

Lots of firsts with me and this book:
1. The longest book I've ever read (898 pages).
2. The most pages I've ever read in a day (300)
3. The first time I've literally had to put the book down and close my eyes so I didn't cry on it...

Books get to me, I admit it. And in the past year or so, I've read quite a few books that got to me...but nothing like this. Hands down, the best book I've ever read in my life. I could not stop reading.

So my friends and I always joke about how we read depressing books, and this book would fit in that category, yet I wasn't and am not depressed. In fact, I almost feel hopeful, as if there's hope for all of us. If Dominick can find happiness, who can't?

„ - Jūs skrupulingai stengiatės suinventorinti visas kančias ir neteisybes, kurias patyrėte iš kitų. Galima jus vadinti kruopščiu koroneriu.“

4/5

Skrodimo stalas. Ir skalpelis Wally Lamb rankoje. Ant stalo čia telpa kur kas daugiau, nei galvoji, kol nepradedi analizuoti. Broliai ir tėvai, seneliai ir patėviai, alkoholikai ir išdavikai, kareiviai ir psichiatrai, religiniai fanatikai ir šventieji, Amerika ir indėnai, mirę ir mirštantys viduje. Knyga skaitosi stebėtinai lengvai ir greitai – jei reikėtų lyginti, sakyčiau, kad beveik Irvingiškai. Tik autorius sau leidžia kur kas mažiau nei pastarasis – atsitraukia, nesikiša, dažnai atrodo, kad čia jo visai nėra. Tik kalba ir kalba, o visa knyga kaip ilgas psichoterapijos seansas – praeitis ir ateitis, dabartis ir atmintis pinasi į tokį mazgą, mainosi vietomis kaip įgudusio mago rankose – prireiks atidumo, kad atpažintum, kur prasideda viena ir baigiasi kita. Jau senokai neskaičiau taip smulkmeniškai išanalizuotų veikėjų portretų – Lamb skalpeliu rėžia taip giliai, kad vietomis net pabosta. Ypač jo noras įtraukti knygą knygoje – tikriausiai pagrindinė priežastis, kodėl romanas 4*, ne 5*.

Vienas iš pagrindinių mano priekaištų – dramatiškumas. Nepasakytum jokiu būdu, kad čia nieko nevyksta, bet knyga man kelia panašią emociją, kaip žinau, jog daugeliui kėlė Mažas gyvenimas – tiek kančios, kad po kiek laiko beveik atbunki. Tiek skausmo, toks jų cunamis, kad pavargsti kapstytis ir beveik nebenori galvos laikyti paviršiuje – kokia prasmė? Tuoj užgrius dar viena. Nes tikrai – viską, ką blogiausio gali sugalvoti, W.Lamb sugrūda į vienos šeimos gyvenimus. Nevardinsiu, nenorėdama sugadinti skaitymo malonumo, bet beveik galima susidaryti siaubo bingo, o skaitant braukyti – didelė tikimybė, kad didžiausi ir baisiausi jūsų baubai čia vienu ar kitu pavidalu tikrai pakels galvas. Po kiek laiko man tiesiog nebeveikė. Ir laikausi nuomonės, kad knygai nebuvo reikalo išsitęsti į 900 puslapių – tiesą sakant, nesu sutikusi tokios, kuriai reikėtų. Ties 700 jau pajaučiau poreikį greičiau užbaigti – net kai įdomu, net kai autoriaus talentas nepaneigiamas, net kai veikėjai gąsdinančiai tikri. Natūraliai nebeturėjau emocijų, kurias dar galėjau šitam romanui skirti. Bet skaityti vis tiek rekomenduoju – puikiai suprasiu visus, kuriems kris prie metų geriausiųjų. Man ne taip wow, bet vis tiek romanas didis įvairiomis prasmėmis. Kažkada bandysiu susikaupti ir serialui.

This book just went rocketing to my all-time Favourites shelf. I cannot imagine spending over 20 hours reading a book and not loving it.

On my eReader, this book was just 3 pages short of 900 pages, and not one paragraph, not one sentence, not one word in the book could be cut without doing the book (and one’s reading experience) irreparable harm.

The main narrator of this book is Dominick whose twin brother Thomas suffers from mental illness. This we know from the beginning. Throughout the book, both brothers crash and burn a few times as they make their way on their journeys through life. Yet they persist in searching out answers for themselves (and each other) to make those journeys more meaningful and fulfilling. Twinship can be a very complex dynamic at the best of times. These two take complexity to a level I’ve never witnessed before.

A secondary narrator is the twins’ maternal grandfather who dictated and/or wrote out his “life history” before he died. It is fascinating to see the parallels play out between the grandfather’s time and the twins’ time and the authenticity of his voice is remarkable.

This book takes a thorough and honest look at many facets of life: twin-ship, mental health, family dynamics (including secrets – and why they remain secrets), death and grieving, race relations through many decades, and so much more.

Within these pages the story is powerful and moves at a fast pace; the characters have strong and unique voices; the writing is sublime, raw, exceptionally moving – just excellent. This book rates more than 5 Stars but it’s all I have to give . . . along with a treasured spot on my Favourites shelf.

And Then We Came to the End.
Truth and Love is Life.
And Now for a Matter of Truth.

I can never remember the actual name of Wally Lamb's "I Know This Much Is True," a bloated slog of a novel about a man dealing with his schizophrenic twin. What does that say about a book when its author, after writing a story that clocks in at around 900 pages -- a story on which he almost certainly spent years working -- proceeds to slap a title on it that means absolutely nothing, which could be slapped onto literally any novel and have the exact same meaning and impact?

A book doesn't have to have a great title to be great, but "I Know This Much Is True" feels almost intentionally bland, as though Lamb is making a point of how unimportant a book's cover/title is. Maybe there's a hidden theme there? Something about don't judge a book by its cover...? There are certainly several characters in "True" who aren't what they seem, including the main character, Dominick Birdsey, who winds up being so conveniently not what anyone thought he was, his life is forever changed for the better and he never has to worry about anything again.

You might be thinking of reading this book, so I won't give away what happens at the end, but I will say the fairytale conclusion made me feel nothing because Dominick was such a relentlessly unlikeable character for every single page of the 900 previous. A former high school teacher turned house painter, he spends his days dodging work to keep his brother out of various mental institutions and spends his nights screwing his hot girlfriend he met at the gym. But he's miserable. His ex-wife and the love of his life, left him after their infant daughter died tragically and he couldn't comfort her. And his brother, Thomas, is a dangerously unstable figure who, at the book's outset, cuts his hand off in the middle of a public library.

So this is all actually pretty good material to start a book with, and for a while "True" is pretty entertaining, as Dominick races around town trying to keep his brother safe and the details of his backstory gradually trickle in. Lamb is no poet, and he hammers the reader over the head with Dominick's interior monologue, and exterior dialogue. No realization, or moment of pathos is delivered without Dominick either spelling it out for us in narration (it's all first person) or ranting about it to one of the many characters. Obviously intelligent and sensitive, Dominick is also almost willfully obstinate, arrogant and obnoxious. At first, it's an intriguing mix of character traits but eventually, it grows frustrating, and by page 700 or so, as Dominick continues to fail to understand how his brother could be so crazy and unreasonable, and continues to yell at the people who just want to help him, it just becomes irritating. It's just really hard to root for this guy or care what happens to him.

But Dominick's annoying qualities are only the beginning of Lamb's mistakes. After a great setup, it's as though he loses faith in his story and characters. He starts throwing in ridiculous, unnecessary plot twists, including one in which Dominick's girlfriend leaves him to run away with her bisexual best friend, but not before revealing that she let him watch the two of them have sex on numerous occasions. Dominick's reaction to this is similar to the reader's -- it's so preposterous it hardly registers because it just seems ridiculous.

Lamb also employs two intensely annoying narrative devices, including flashbacks to Dominick's past courtesy of sessions with an overbearing therapist, and a book within a book written by Dominick's great grandfather, a monstrously unpleasant human being who is even harder to read about than Dominick. Lamb spends the latter half of the book intersplicing scenes from a memoir written by this great grandfather, which of course Dominick keeps returning to because, in yet another zany plot twist, he thinks it holds the answer to who his real father is (I feel like I'm describing a soap opera right now.) In creating the great-grandfather's voice, Lamb utilizes flowery, rambling prose as a character trait, dragging every moment out for what feels like ever. Each chapter taken from the great-grandfather's book-within-the-book felt endless, pointless and miserable, and I dreaded every single one of them. Lamb could have cut all of them, could have cut this somehow nasty-yet-boring character entirely and the book would not have suffered one bit.

Lamb doesn't understand which moments should be dwelled on and which should be truncated. We are treated to pages and pages about the great-grandfather building his house, but (spoiler alert) the death scene of Thomas (the dramatic crux of the entire novel) goes by so fast it barely even registers. Even Dominick himself seems barely affected by it, despite the fact the main struggle of his life is suddenly gone.

Despite it's entirely unmemorable title, "This Much Truth That I Have" managed to be memorable in the end. I will never forget how bad it was, whatever it's called.

People keep griping about the F word. It's just a word. i'm more bothered while trying to re-read this book by-
Wrong narrator syndrome. I really want to get into Thomas's head more. Both Domenicos are just not interesting. Who wants to hear about their grandfather? That guy is such a jerk. He's driving me crazy. Who wants to read about someone thinking he's all that, a bag of chips and a value meal?

Another thing is the dialogue is driving me crazy. The characters are just too simplistic. They don't really have a whole lot of facades to them.

Now to continue tormenting myself.

Dude, first of all WE KNOW THE GUY IS ITALIAN SO WHY ALL THE ITALIAN? Second, WHY MUST YOU CRAM EVERY SINGLE TRAGEDY YOU CAN INTO ONE BOOK?!

The actual review:

Dang, this book frustrated me. So I took away its stars. It's just like with She's Come Undone. Oprah rants about it, most people love it, but it's full of-
Stereotypes. Every character is a stereotype. The lesbians, the Indian from India doctor, the Black Power/Native Power part black part Native character, the DON'T YOU DARE BE A SISSY stepfather, the long suffering mother.
I just don't think real people are LIKE this, this simplistic and cardboard!

The book suffers from Wrong Narrator Syndrome. Dominick isn't as interesting as his brother, but we get his point of view, then we get to read about his asshole grandfather! He was such a hateful and unsympathetic, dickhole of a character that it was just so unpleasant to read about him. He was full of himself. He was proud to treat the people close to him like steaming dog crap. Why did we even need so MUCH of him anyway?

As I said above, Lamb has to cram every single tragedy in this book he can think of. You have to have mental illness, rape, abuse, more abuse, racism, AIDS, suicide, killing a monkey and then he's got to add even more of that! It's like you are in a boxing ring being punched over and over and not getting a break from all the mega-misery! Same thing with She's Come Undone! Stuff besides rape and abuse happens to people!
It's contrived, it's cringe-worthy. I will not read any more of this poxy writer! People are out of their minds if they think adult books are better than children's books JUST because have adult protagonists. I've read young adult books that tackled these subjects a hell of a lot better.