Review: The Hour I First Believed

When I was about fifteen, I read and fell in love with Wally Lamb's first two books, She's Come Undone and I Know this Much is True.  For almost a decade, I heard rumors that he was working on a third book and waited as patiently as possible for it to come out.  I can't honestly say I enjoyed The Hour I First Believed as much as I remember enjoying Lamb's other books, but I'm still glad I read it.  It's over 700 pages and I finished it without once feeling like I was forcing myself to sit down and read it, and that certainly says something.  

The Hour I First Believed tells of a middle aged teacher named Caelum Quirk who teaches English at Columbine High School at the time of the infamous shootings.  Although Caelum does not witness the shootings, his wife, Maureen, (also employed by Columbine as the school nurse) does.  Much of the novel revolves around the consequences of Maureen's post-traumatic stress.  This is by far one of most ambitious novels I've ever read.  Lamb attempts to tackle a wide variety of themes, from the importance of family history, to faith and religion, to the significance of (more often than not futile?) quests for social justice, to what it means to be an American in 2008.  While the first half of the book focuses largely on the events at Columbine, there are also subplots involving Hurricane Katrina, the Iraq war, etc.  Characters who have been scarred by modern current events and family crises are paralleled with those who lived through traumatic events of the past (mostly the civil war and its surrounding issues).  As Caelum comes to understand the true meaning of family - in terms of ancestry, friendship, and other close relationships - he learns to deal with his emotions in a mature manner and eventually embrace faith.

I don't generally have much tolerance for overly self-important books, and The Hour I First Believed definitely tries to say too much.  There are so many little sub-plots that could probably have been eliminated, but I think I understand why Lamb thought them necessary.  The book is very well crafted, and everything fits together like a jigsaw puzzle.  Taking out these sections would not have affected the plot all that much, but would have muddled up the novel's almost too clean presentation of certain symbols and their corresponding ideas.