I Know This Much Is True by Wally Lamb – Oprah’s Book Club Selection #19

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Apr 062012
 

Image of I Know This Much Is True: A Novel (P.S.)

I Know This Much Is True: A Novel (P.S.)
By Wally Lamb
Oprah Book Club® Selection #19, June 1998

Editorial Review:

What if you were a 40-year-old housepainter, horrifically abused, emotionally unavailable, and your identical twin was a paranoid schizophrenic who believed in public self-mutilation? You’d either be a guest on the Jerry Springer Show or Dominick Birdsey, the antihero, narrator, and bad-juju magnet of I Know This Much Is True. Somewhere in the recesses of this hefty 912-page tome lurks an honest, moving account of one man’s search, denial, and acceptance of self. This is no easy feat considering his grandfather seemed to take parenting tips from the SS and his grandmother was a possible teenage murderess, his stepfather a latent sadist, and his brother, Thomas, a politically motivated psychopath. Not one to break with tradition, Dominick continues the dysfunctional legacy with rape, a failed marriage, a nervous breakdown, SIDS, a car crash, and a racist conspiracy against a coworker–just to name a few.
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She’s Come Undone by Wally Lamb – Oprah’s Book Club Selection #4

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Mar 292012
 

SImage of She's Come Undonehe’s Come Undone
By Wally Lamb
Oprah Book Club® Selection #4, December 1996

Editorial Review:

“Mine is a story of craving; an unreliable account of lusts and troubles that began, somehow, in 1956 on the day our free television was delivered.” So begins the story of Dolores Price, the unconventional heroine of Wally Lamb’s She’s Come Undone. Dolores is a class-A emotional basket case, and why shouldn’t she be? She’s suffered almost every abuse and familial travesty that exists: Her father is a violent, philandering liar; her mother has the mental and emotional consistency of Jell-O; and the men in her life are probably the gender’s most loathsome creatures. But Dolores is no quitter; she battles her woes with a sense of self-indulgence and gluttony rivaled only by Henry VIII. Hers is a dysfunctional Wonder Years, where growing up in the golden era was anything but ideal. While most kids her age were dealing with the monumental importance of the latest Beatles single and how college turned an older sibling into a long-haired hippie, Dolores was grappling with such issues as divorce, rape, and mental illness. Whether you’re disgusted by her antics or moved by her pathetic ploys, you’ll be drawn into Dolores’s warped, hilarious, Mallomar-munching world.



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