My friend Ron recommended this book to me, saying he thought it was something that I would enjoy. I owe him my thanks because he was right, although I didn’t exactly enjoy it… I rather loved it. I took so much from this story that I hardly know where to begin with a review.

This is what an exceptional author does: they put me inside the characters so that I know them and feel them for who they are and where they’ve been. Dominick is as rich a character as I’ve encountered in a long time and even though I couldn’t relate specifically to the events in his life, his voice is so vivid and authentic that I feel like I know him… and his pain, his anger, become mine.

So here are my rambling thoughts and interpretations, pared down to a relatively jumbled paragraph which still only scratches the surface…

The burden of love. Dominick’s identical twin Thomas suffers from a schizophrenia and is dependent on his twin to look out for his well being. Dominick finds himself paralyzed by the simultaneous desire for and fear of detachment from Thomas, so that he himself can live a more normal life. Guilt. A kind of survivor’s guilt, as the twin who escaped mental illness. Did he not protect his brother enough as a child and is he the reason behind Thomas’s illness? Anger. An abusive and dysfunctional childhood, a tragic loss in his adult life, feeling like he’ll drown being tethered to his brother. Who would not be angry in this situation? Unable to move on. Feeling like the world is out to screw him. It’s this very anger that makes him despise himself. Forgiveness. This is what Dominick needs the most. Release… to forgive and be able to move forward. Yet how can he forgive when he holds so much anger inside of him?

The beauty of this story is in watching as Dominick, after losing his way time and time again, finally starts to make his way “out of the woods.” His entire life this man has been frozen in those moments from his childhood, which are revealed via flashbacks throughout the book. He spends so much time mired down by his anger and fear that when begins to discover the idea of acceptance and letting go, I felt that weight coming off my own shoulders.

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.”

This is a lengthy book but it is worth almost every page. I say “almost” because I did feel that grandfather Tempesta’s memoirs went on for too many pages and interrupted the flow in the second half. There is much to be gleaned from it, however, and in the end it wasn't enough for me to give this book anything less than five stars.

I’m going end this review with an excerpt from a song that has always spoken to me and which I feel is very apropos to this story, U2’s Stuck in a Moment:

n  I was unconscious, half asleep
The water is warm till you discover how deep
I wasn't jumping
For me it was a fall
It's a long way down to nothing at all
You've got to get yourself together
You've got stuck in a moment
And now you can't get out of it
Don't say that later will be better now
You're stuck in a moment
And you can't get out of it.n

another book that was like a sucker-punch to the gut. even with 900+ pages, i didn't want this one to end, though it ended beautifully. cried again at this one, which is rare. and it contains one of my favorite written sentences. i didn't care if it is an oprah book. i loved "she's come undone," but this book is leagues better.

This is one of those books I read that has never left me. After I finished it I just sat in my chair and cryed for a long time. And I can't explain why exactly, as the ending was surprisingly hopeful. It explores the nature of close family relationships and how you can love someone and also hate them and be embarrassed by them, and the guilt that results from these conflicting emotions. The main character has a mother with physical defects which have inhibited her whole life, a brother with severe mental disabilities that have profoundly affected the entire family, and an abusive step-father who damaged everyone under his control. Yet in spite of all the really depressing themes, it is really quite moving and inspirational. It's about survival and forgiveness and atonement. I also loved the secondary story about the grandfather. The book was an astonishing achievement.

This is a book I have been meaning to read since 1997. That's actually even before it was officially published, which might seem weird, if you didn't already know that Wally Lamb was teaching writing at my high school at the time he was working on this novel; and if you didn't know that my freshman English class helped "edit" one of the first chapters, back in 1994 or 1995.

The novel tells the story of Dominick and Thomas Birdsey, identical twins dealing with very fraternal problems, namely that Thomas is schizophrenic, and Dominick is almost his last remaining caregiver. The novel is about many things, but most of all, as told from Dominick's perspective, it is about forgiveness of the self, of family, of our pasts, both personal and collective.

I know a number of the people named in the acknowledgements (including several of my high school teachers), and my high school gets a shout-out as well. I didn't know Lamb very well, but I always found him pretty favorable, one of those teachers you like because they never actually have to give you a grade.

I never read this book until now because I also have a connection to one of those named in the dedication: to Sam Deglin, a high school friend who, along with her younger brother Randy, was killed in a freak car accident in front of our high school in January of 1997. I knew she and Randy were named in the dedication, and for this reason, I avoided the book. I didn't want to know how their deaths connected wtih the story, and I didn't want to be reminded at all of my hometown in southeastern Connecticut, where I assumed (correctly, it turns out) the book was set.

I think enough time passed in order for me to feel OK about this book...and in fact, once I began reading, I couldn't stop. The references to people, places, and events of my hometown were only part of the allure: this book is beautifully written, and the structure of the novel - which jumps back and forth between the 1920s, 1940s, 1960s, and 1980s with refreshingly little unnecessary exposition - contributes to the sense that, like the mind of Thomas Birdsey (who I guess you could call the "antagonist"), things are never what they seem, and that sometimes the answers to our biggest fears and questions were right in front of us, all along.

I would recommend this book highly, but it certainly helps to know a thing or two about growing up in Norwich, Connecticut too!

I found this novel to be a well (if simply) written page turner that is ultimately undermined by its contrivances and by the author's seeming inability to let his readers draw their own conclusions or puzzle things out without having every last theme and story thread laid out explicitly. And then repeated in case the reader didn't catch on. I've read coloring books that are less insulting to a reader's intelligence. The melodrama of the novel is off the charts as well. To whit: Mental illness, child abuse, rape (and more rape and still more rape), AIDS, child murder, SIDS, amputation (not once but twice), a deadly mine collapse, a deadly volcano eruption, murder by ground glass in food (speaking of contrivances), suicide by drowning, suicide by gunshot, domestic violence, death by castration, death by falling from a roof, severe injury from falling from a roof (a completely separate event), bestiality, car accident, cross dressing, voyeurism, and (of course of course) incest. I'm sure I'm leaving out at least half a dozen atrocities, but who's counting? Oh, I know who. Wally Lamb. Counting his money. Thanks, Oprah!

Lamb's tale of one man dealing with his twin brother's schizophrenia is honest and true to life. Spanning decades and making a number of digressions (a grandfather's biography, a flashback to when Dominick realizes he and his brother are not the same person), the story was always engaging.

The description of Dominick's infant daughter's death at three weeks is heart wrenching. Even sadder is his indulgence in a "what if" fantasy seven years later, as he imagines taking her to dancing lessons, something he would have done if she hadn't died.

At the time I read it, I had finally come to the realization that my husband and I would not be having any more children and I was feeling very sorry for myself. On reading that passage, I realized that Dominick's wistful fantasy was my real life. My little girl was alive and well and I was able to take her to dancing lessons and soccer practice and kindergarten and everything else little girls do. I never felt sorry for myself again after that.

The point of view, the colloquial style, the brutal light in which Lamb paints Dominick's life -- as the identical twin who is not the schizophrenic, as the survivor of abuse, as a parent that lost a child to SIDS -- is awesome. It's not a difficult read, but it can be really gut wrenching at times.

HOWEVER. It all works out. In the last couple of chapters, everything is made right and the good guy wins. I got so angry. Sure, not everything is perfect, but it is much closer than it would ever be in reality. That's what really got me -- this book did such a good job of slicing though the gritty reality and then BAM! we have resolution on all counts, healing is happening left, right, and center, and everything is just hunky-dory.

Whatever.

I read this book years ago and just loved it. It still haunts me.

This was what I wanted A Little Life to be ! I felt so invested in this bleak trajectory of Dominick's life despite not being able to like him; it does have problematic language and I wasn't as invested in the diary POV however.

okay yes i read this to prepare for the upcoming HBO series starring Mark Ruffalo and yes I do see why Ruffalo would be drawn to these mumbley/yelly twins

anyway I knew this opened with the schizophrenic twin chopping his own hand off in a public library, which obviously yikes, but I was not at all prepared for each subsequent chapter to casually reveal some EVEN MORE OFF THE RAILS ACTION and not from the severely mentally ill character, just from like randoms.

(Stefon voice) this book has EVERYTHING, casual gay panic, casual misogyny, monkey fucking, witchcraft, murder, and every single hot button issue of the early 1990s.

I really struggled with Dominick's misogynist narrative voice, especially at the beginning when I wasn't totally sure how intentional it was supposed to be given that he kept pointing out how sexist his friend was. It turns out it was intentional and was addressed within the narrative but honestly I'm just tired of reading books with exhausting narrators. Can't I just read a book narrated by a nice person with chill vibes. please. Anyway it's not Wally Lamb's fault that it's currently 2020 but i do feel like the target audience for this book would be a non-woke man living in the year 1992.

I am interested to see how this becomes an HBO series because it is very grounded in some problematique 1990s issues.

Anyway that said it was compelling and a page turner mostly because I felt like anything could happen at any goddamn time.

--

re-read for the podcast, shook that I gave this 3 stars?? I must have read this on the tail of something worse. IDK. Tho it was a page-turner as I stated before...hmm. Ratings are subjective!

https://www.frowl.org/worstbestseller...

Wow! This was a really great book. Very complex characters touching on many aspects of the human condition (living as an identical twin, schizophrenia, depression, adoption, death, love and a whole host of others.) While the topics covered in this book can be at times very heavy, I think it is an accurate portrayal of the emotions people deal with in their lives about which they don't speak. It's quite a lengthy book, but one I was rather eager to finish.

100/100

I think I'm actually gonna make a video about this but for now, just know that no book has ever made me feel or cry as much as this book has. It is a beautiful and tragic saga of brotherhood, love and death, grief, heartbreak, and everything in between. I'm sure reading this while I'm in a really shitty spot mentally probably made it mean a whole lot more to me in my ultra-sensitive emotional state, but for now, it's on the very short list of 100/100 books for me, and will classify itself as an all time favorite, and one I'll come back to many times throughout my life