The Hour I First Believed

Written by Wally Lamb

Narrated by George Guidall

When high school teacher Caelum Quirk and his wife, Maureen, move to Littleton, Colorado, they both get jobs at Columbine High School. In April 1999, while Caelum is away, Maureen finds herself in the library at Columbine, cowering in a cabinet and expecting to be killed. Miraculously, she survives. But when Caelum and Maureen flee to an illusion of safety on the Quirk family's Connecticut farm, they discover that the effects of chaos are not easily put right.

While Maureen fights to regain her sanity, Caelum discovers five generations' worth of diaries, letters, and newspaper clippings in his family's house. As unimaginable secrets emerge, Caelum grapples with the past and struggles to fashion a future from the ashes of tragedy. His quest for meaning is at once mythic and contemporary, personal and quintessentially American.

• Language: English
• Publisher: HarperAudio
• Release date: Nov 11, 2008
• ISBN: 9780061771323

Wally Lamb

Wally Lamb is the author of five New York Times bestselling novels: She’s Come Undone, I Know This Much Is True, The Hour I First Believed, Wishin’ and Hopin’, and We Are Water. His first two works of fiction, She’s Come Undone and I Know This Much Is True, were both #1 New York Times bestsellers and selections of Oprah’s Book Club. Lamb edited Couldn’t Keep It to Myself, I’ll Fly Away, and You Don’t Know Me, three volumes of essays from students in his writing workshop at York Correctional Institution, a women’s prison in Connecticut, where he has been a volunteer facilitator for two decades. He lives in Connecticut and New York.

Reviews for The Hour I First Believed

[blockbuster1994 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This book is a journey through life, spanning several generations. Each time period seemed well researched and genuine -- from the 19th century through the Columbine High School massacre to current times. Lamb's writing is engaging and I found the characters he presented to be true-to-life, with all their flaws, fears and occasional truimphs chronologed.

[tonyasb · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I just finished reading Wally Lamb's newest creation, The Hour I First Believed. I was very moved by this book. Lamb doesn't let his characters off easy. They have hard lives and have to make hard choices. His first two books, She's Come Undone and I Know This Much Is True, are witness to this. In those first two books, the main characters are often dealing with one personal tragedy that has made their life spin out of control. The same is true for The Hour I First Believed, with the exception that the first trauma is more like a jumping point. Life will not only never be the same, it's almost impossible to stop the following tragedies that are a result of the first.The book is about a couple, Caelum (teacher) and Maureen Quirk (school nurse), who are witnesses to the Columbine massacre. Caelum is out of town seeing to his aunt's funeral when he sees the footage on television and rushes home to find out if his wife, students, and colleagues are still alive. Maureen is still alive, but having been in the library during the shooting, she is a different woman when she walks out of the school than she was when she walked in that day. (This is all on the cover, so I'm not spoiling anything!)Although Caelum and Maureen are fictional characters, many of the real victims are featured in the story. Lamb takes the time to detail exactly what happened that day and the planning that went into it by the two boys for those who may not have spent every minute in front of the television watching it unfold as it happened (as I did). Ironically, it is Caelum that makes the statement that although many kids are bullied, they don't go out and commit mass murder while Maureen (briefly) sees why it might happen in the first place. In her role as school nurse, she has been giving comfort to the students who feel like outsiders. Maureen's PTSD is debilitating in the aftermath and Caelum's life is turned in so many directions that it can't even be called up-side-down. The later tragedies of 9/11 and Katrina make appearances in the story as well as the Civil War.I saw a review that stated Lamb takes too many tangents from the main storyline. I didn't feel that was the case at all. Every generation in Caelum's family, going aback to the civil war, has a prominent role at one point in the story. However, I don't feel these were "tangents" but integral parts of a story that would have been incomplete without them. It is true that his and Maureen's story could have been told well without these bits of history and the book may have been much shorter but I felt that Lamb was making the point with these "tangents." We are not solely the product of our parents and those who have been in our lives from birth but every major decision in the lives of those before us, continues to affect us whether we realize it or not. Those people made decisions that would have made our own lives very different if another choice was made.I waited a long time for this book, having greatly enjoyed his first two, and Wally Lamb did not disappoint.

[pam8enser · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

Ug. I give up. I hate this main character. I just don't like who he is and his outlook on life. I guess since it's over 800 pages that made the 250 that I got through seem not that far into it. I just had a feeling that it wasn't going to get any better.

I'm disappointed. Wally Lamb usually moves and challenges me to reflect. Not this one.

[laurie_library_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

very difficult to get through...I had a difficult time trying to keep the different stories straight. I was unable to finish it...I'll try again later

[quzy_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

The Hour I First Believed is a book I just couldn't put down. It starts out about the relationship between Caelum and Maureen Quirk, Caelum a high school teacher and Maureen a school nurse, but quickly develops from the complexities of a marriage to the difficulties of loving someone and trying to keep it all together while the other person is falling apart. Caelum and Maureen move to Littleton Colorado for a fresh start, but Maureen is caught in the Library of Columbine High School during the killing rampage. She survives the shooting , but is definitely not the same person and as she is spiraling down to disaster Caelum tries to be strong for her, but has to deal with all sorts of conflicting emotions. While Maureen is crumbling from the after effects of the Columbine shooting, Caelum & she move back to Connecticut and to his family farm. Here is where Caelum must deal with his demons and it's here the story takes off in two directions. Fidelity, love, devotion, depression, addiction, genealogy are all words worth mentioning when describing this story. The characters grab you from the start and are well developed as the story progresses. It's over 700 pages and how could it not be with everything going on? But it's worth every page and after finishing the book I wish there were another 700 pages. Very well researched, especially in some of the more obscure references to Mark Twain and Tesla (Twain & Tesla? you are asking..) , it brings life to the story. Even though this is a work of fiction, I kept having to remind myself of that along the way. I would say the only, and I mean ONLY, thing that I did not enjoy at first was the jumping around in flashbacks through out the chapters. After a while I learned to stop reading for a few minutes, take a deep breath and then continue on when I got to a flashback. And this solved the problem for me of it all being one jumble. Although I loved the book, and have never read any other book by Wally Lamb, I was so sad at the end. Whatever happened to happily ever after.... I guess that's why this book is so real!

[jessica1646 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Since I really liked Wally Lamb's other works, I was looking forwrd to reading this novel. However, I was quite disappointed with the book. The more I got into the book, the more I found it dull and repetitive. The Columbine aspect of the story was interesting, but the way the author wove the past into the novel just seemed too boring and too long. This book was a near miss.

[melissarochelle_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I LOVED the beginning. The story was so intense and it just really drew you in...but then it started to get a little drawn out. Then the ending...and it was SO SAD. I'm just over books that don't have happy endings. I would like some smiles.

[pdebolt_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This is a brilliant book that covers a great deal of ground emotionally and chronologically. It begins with a couple deeply affected by the Columbine shootings, and moves from there to the history of a family, addiction, and a long-held mystery. Wally Lamb obviously learned a great deal from the female prisoners whose writing he mentored, and the incorporation of this experience into the novel is essential to the plot. He is unsurpassed in allowing his readers to know what the characters feel and the impact on their subsequent actions. I loved his previous books and this one is no exception. I only hope we don't have to wait so long before his next book is published. I will remember this book for a very long time.

[lkernagh · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Without a doubt, this is a very ambitious story. Against the backdrop of the Columbine High School shootings, Hurricane Katrina and the Iraq War, Lamb tackles a myriad of complex issues like marriage, drug addiction, post traumatic stress disorder and prison reform. Lamb "spokesperson" is everyday man Caelum Quirk. Quirk is not a hero, he is not a philosopher, he is not a healer. He is ordinary person trapped in a downward spiraling life of pain, grief and yes, even a bit of the absurd, enough to make one wonder what kind of hand he has been dealt by the card dealer in the sky. As much as I appreciate the voice of Caelum, the book itself tends to get mired down in the details. It is a case of trying to cram way to much stuff into one book. One reviewer has summed up this book quite nicely: "melodrama that justifies platitudes via seemingly endless ugliness." Lamb imbues his story with a frankness that is refreshing, but could have come up with a better story if he had controlled the rambling tangents the story dips down. Favorite Quote: "We all have the power to free ourselves from prisons of our own or others' making, but doing so depends on our willingness to take that crucial leap of faith and realize that angels are real, not really the product of wishful thinking, and that they are all around us. We are, my friends, or can be, angels for one another."

[jenners26 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Story OverviewThis is the story of Caelum Quirk -- a middle-aged teacher who is trying to come to terms with his present, his past and his troubled marriage. Married to Maureen (his third wife), Caelum's story begins with his troubles handling Maureen's infidelity. In an attempt to save their marriage, they leave their home in Connecticut and move to Littleton Colorado, where they work at Columbine High School. (Yes...that Columbine High School. Maureen is the school nurse and Caelum is an English teacher.) The move seems to help the marriage somewhat, but Caelum and Maureen still have moments of distance between them. Then Caelum's beloved aunt -- and his only link to his family -- suffers a stroke and Caelum returns to Connecticut to say goodbye. While in Connecticut, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold go on their well-publicized rampage in the high school.Panicked and unable to reach Maureen, Caelum returns in a panic to Littleton. He finally locates her, but she is a shell of her former self. Trapped in the library during the shootings, Maureen is unable to cope with the fact that she has survived. Maureen begins to unravel. Attempting to help Maureen deal with her post-traumatic stress disorder, Caelum moves them back to his aunt's house in Connecticut. There, Maureen continues to deteriorate while Caelum struggles to keep them financially afloat. During this time, Caelum discovers a secret family history that casts a new light on everything he thought was true about his family.My ThoughtsYou may be thinking "Wow, just go tell us the whole story, why don't you?" Believe me when I tell you that I just gave you the bare bones plot. There is A LOT going on in this book, which I think is ultimately its fatal flaw.Don't get me wrong. Wally Lamb is a fantastic writer, and I didn't once consider not finishing this book. However, there is so much going on that I felt that the novel suffered. There are long sections of the book devoted to Caelum's ancestor, Lillian Popper, and her experiences during the Civil War era. (These sections are either provided as diary entries or as excerpts from a "thesis" written by one of the characters.) There is a lengthy "transcript" from when Caelum interviews an older gentleman about the history of a cigarette company. There are subplots about Iraq war veterans, Hurricane Katrina victims, a prison, a family unable to accept their favored son's homosexuality, and Caelum's best friend's search for love and the perfect car. In short, there is material enough in this book for about three novels, but Lamb packs it all into one. Ultimately, I think this was a mistake. If Lamb wanted to write about Lillian Popper's life in such depth, perhaps he should have made this a separate novel.I also have an issue with some of the amazing coincidences that Lamb contrives for his characters. Isn't it just a little too convenient that the Hurricane Katrina victims he offers shelter to include a women's studies graduate student that pulls together the convoluted story of Caelum's family? And during one point, so much stuff happens at the same time that I just threw up my hands in disbelief.But...there is no getting around the fact that Wally Lamb is a gifted writer. In the case of this book, I felt like he just had too much to say and crammed it all together into one book. I felt it would have been enough to focus on Caelum and Maureen's marriage and their post-Columbine experiences. I think if the author had pulled out three of the different story threads (the Columbine story, the Lillian Popper story, the Iraq war veteran story), he could have had three distinct and more focused novels. As it is, you get it all in one big, sprawling book, and none of the stories get the attention and focus they deserve.My Final RecommendationUltimately, I cannot give this book a no-holds-barred recommendation. I wish I could have liked this book more because the writing itself is darn good, and I love how Lamb incorporates all the little details that squarely places his story in the time in which it was happening. But I really do think the book is flawed because of its sprawl and disjointed plot. Here's wishing Mr. Lamb's next book is a little more focused.

[erickibler · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

An unabridged audiobook.

[klburnside · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

At first I really enjoyed this book. The beginning of the book focused mostly on the Columbine school shootings and the effects of this on the narrarator's wife and his marraige. Much of this part was extremely disturbing, especially the excerpts from actual writings by the shooters, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold. At this point in the book, I was beginning to feel an emotional connection to the characters and was excited to see what the next 500 pages might hold.

I found it to be a downward slope from there. The novel then follows the narrarator as he moves back to his family farm and unearths all these secrets from the past. The idea of this was also exciting to me, but I found myself not caring about the secrets he was uncovering. I kept skimming over these parts. It seemed like much of the building from the first half of the novel was a waste of time.

So overall, I was really disappointed in this book. It had all the makings of a good book. It covered a lot of issues I'm interested in. Prisons, family farms, the trauma of war, family history, etc. I appreciated many of the the messages conveyed: the condition of today's prisons systems, the symptoms of PTSD that continue to affect so many people whose lives have been plagued by violence, the effects of war on soldiers, etc... I was going to give this book two stars, but I really liked the last page, as well as the author's postscripts.

[marlene9nl · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Wow. I don't know what to say. It took me nearly 2 weeks to read this huge book and i am glad I bought it.

I did not know beforehand what it was about so I started to wonder after reading 1/3rd of this book, where is he going with this? And I have been wondering ever since lol. I don't know. It go's all over the place. In one way nothing really happens but in the other everything happens. it is hard to explain and to be honest, I still don't know if I liked this book that much.

[juliana_t_10 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I liked the last quarter of the 700+ page book better than the first three quarters. It is evident that Wally Lamb struggled initially, which is unfortunate. I think the book could have been half of its length, and it could have been more powerful. I much preferred "Columbine" by Dave Cullen; sometimes non-fiction is better than fiction.

[bnbooklady · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I really wanted to love this book. Lamb succeeds in imagining his fictional main characters, Caelum and Maureen Quirk, into the real-life tragedy that occurred at Columbine High School on April 20th, 1999, and his writing about their experiences in the wake of that incident is compelling, gripping, and intense.However, as the story progresses, Lamb introduces several subplots that become distracting and makes surprising revelations about the Quirks' lives and history that seem soap opera-esque and unnecessary.Read my full review at The Book Lady's Blog.

[dorritt_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Lamb apparently spent almost a decade working on this, and I think that may be the fundamental problem. A guy this creative is bound to have scores of good ideas in that time, too many to shove into one book, but get the feeling that that's exactly what happened here. This is really enough content for four books, which he's tried to tie together by highlighting common themes. (Did I say "highlighting"? I meant, "hitting us over the head with them until we're dazed" - there is not much subtlety to it.) The net result is a story that incorporates over 150 years of events, a bewildering cast of characters with complicated backstories that don't end up mattering, distracting & unnecessary subplots, major symbol/metaphor overload, and so many themes that the interwoven plotlines end up feeling contrived and unreal. Poor Caelum, Lamb's central character (think one of Philip Roth's doleful males in full mid-life crisis mode) - is there a disaster or hot-button issue in the 20th century that DOESN'T touch his life? The Iraq War, Columbine, Korea, Katrina, PTSD, tort abuse, penal reform, drunk driving, suicide, drug abuse, sexual abuse, abortion, women's rights ... after a while I started thinking of him as the anti-Forrest Gump, a man whose life improbably intersects with great events but who, rather than find ways to rise above the chaos, just keeps getting crushed anew, like Sisyphus rolling his boulder up that hill. (Which, by the way, is just one of the 20 or so sustained metaphors in the book - too many, too much!) After 750 pages you *finally* get to the "hour I first believed", by which time you may well be thinking, as I did, "did it really have to take this long?" Wish Lamb had been brave enough to break this into 3-4 shorter works, each with a much smaller scope, fewer characters, and the time to explore in depth just a few metaphors and themes each. I'll take 3-4 tasty, meticulously crafted dinners over this big, overwhelming, rather sloppily prepared buffet of a book any day.

[freddlerabbit · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Despite the criticisms I have of the book - and I am surprised to find myself at the end of it with so many, Lamb's style is so compelling to me, so rich and full and perfectly paced, that I stayed up well past my bedtime for four days because I couldn't put it down. To me, that's an incredible marker of talent - while half my brain was engaging in criticisms, the half that controlled my fingers kept turning the pages. All of Lamb's work is excellent. His characters are human. As the reader, you often can know much more than they do - can see much more than they do, can watch them walk into some stupid call they've made and screw up and want to yell at them about it. The experience is really like being able to see through someone else's eyes - you can't change them, you can't make them learn more or know better, but you can experience everything with them as they learn, themselves. His subjects are often ordinary people to whom really difficult, and sometimes extraordinary things happen - he's like Donna Tartt meets Michael Chabon. If you like to read books that demonstrate internal struggles and growth, if you like to become deeply enmeshed in a character's "head" and if you like to read about people who themselves are fairly ordinary, with routine responses and feelings and failings - this book (and all of Lamb's work) should make you very happy.That being said, there are parts of the book I was unhappy with. I didn't realize, before I started reading, that this story would be connected, slightly but consistently to I Know This Much Is True, Lamb's previous book about the Birdsey twins. I felt that Lamb got a little heavy with his reliance on the images and theory of twinning - which the previous book had grappled with beautifully, and I myself didn't feel that these themes added that much to the story. They felt too contrived to me, unnecessary and distracting. Additionally, the last 20% or so of the book contains a large quantity of recited historical narrative about an ancestor of the main character, presented in the form of a presented paper or doctoral thesis. I found this rough slogging - I don't care for historical listings of facts, much, myself - and the often-dry recitations there "so and so did this, which was unusual for people like so and so at this time. Then so and so did that." were a striking and unwelcome contrast to Lamb's usual style. It felt to me that he had given up on writing the story and wanted us to know this biography - but it wasn't clear to me why that was. I didn't care much about the character mentioned - we didn't know that much about who she was. And while it was an important plot point for the narrator to have that information, there were other ways to accomplish this. But I think this will really depend on what you want from a book - a previous commenter says exactly the opposite, preferring historical recitation to interiority and character development, that reviewer says s/he preferred the last pages to the rest. Lamb does a workable job of weaving larger themes into the personal struggles of the narrator - he manages, with varying degrees of subtlety, to work in some meditations on the unforseeable effects of traumatic events, both large and small, on how little one person can know another, on feelings of helplessness to change much in the worlds in which we live. I find his characters not only compelling, but likeable. And Lamb's name on a cover will still be enough to convince me to buy whatever he comes out with next. But if you're going to start somewhere, I'd read I Know This Much Is True first - and if you'd like to read about a Columbine type situation, I think that We Need to Talk About Kevin is a much more solid, even, and less-contrived feeling book.

[eye_gee-1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This book really had me hooked for a while. I was impressed with the the book's complex structure -- the author managed to interweave a variety of themes seamlessly, and the characters he created to explore his topics were well written. I've never thought of a book as having architecture before, but that's the word that came to mind as I read this novel. At some point near the end, though, he lost me. It's not that the structure unravelled, but I found the ending of the book disappointing and weak after what had come before.

[redjanet · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I have very mixed feelings about this book. I think that is mainly because it felt like it was a book within a book and there were so many different strands of the overall story that it felt like almost too much and a little overwhelming. I thought this was going to be a book about the after effects of Columbine on a couple of the characters, but it ended up being so much more than that. That is not necessarily a bad thing and Wally Lamb is clearly a very able writer who is able to hold a story together well so that it pieces all together.I think the main thing I didn't like about the book was the voice of the narrator. I found him irritating, slightly misogynistic and overall, not very likeable. I THINK that was supposed to be on purpose, but it felt very obvious (like, glaring in your face obvious) from the start, that the main character would be going through a big emotional crisis that would make him talk about his feelings and he would hopefully, by the end of the book, be a bit less of a jerk. It all felt a little bit cliched.That said, this was still a good, engrossing read. The characters from the narrator's ancestry came to life so well that I had to Google them for myself to make sure they weren't real! The story was full of surprises and despite my complaints, I would not dismiss any future books from Wally Lamb.

[bribre01 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

It was a very good and interesting read, but my favorite Wally Lamb book is still I Know This Much is True. This one was about the same caliber, but a bit repetitive and bungled at some parts. It could have been shorter.

[citizenjoyce · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Do you ever go to a buffet that's so full of good food that you take some of everything and end up eating so much that you make yourself sick? Imagine that you've gone to an intellectual buffet with Wally Lamb who insists on loading your place with idea after idea, digression after digression. Everything is good and tasty, but there's just too much. Lamb doesn't know when to stop. He thinks he has access to so much information he just has to share with the reader who, after all, may have no other books to read so no way to get a taste of all the delightful knowledge he's gained throughout years of research. Lucky readers, he has fed us, and fed us all too well. Only half way through the book my nausea began to rise. PTSD, school shootings, bullying, substance abuse, marriage, man-woman relationships, prison reform, the civil war, slavery, the history of Bavaria, Rheingold beer, creative writing, sculpting, suffragettes, donuts vs bagels, corn mazes, life quests, religion, psychiatry - now that I have finished I understand how force-fed geese feel. I have become Wally Lamb foie gras, but my suffering is over. Never again will I dine at Lamb's overstuffed table.

[msf59 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This may only be Wally Lamb’s third novel, he’s not exactly prolific, but like Dylan in the mid-sixties, everything he creates is a grand-slam. This one follows an English teacher named Caelum Quirk and his wife, Maureen, who both happen to work at Columbine High School. The story covers the massacre and the nasty fallout, as these shell-shocked characters attempt to pull their damaged lives back in order. This is only act I, in a sprawling narrative, that finds Caelum reaching back into his colorful family history to find strength and closure. The story spans over a hundred and fifty years and this includes visits with Mark Twain, King Ludwig, Gettysburg, Katrina and the Iraq war and that is just a few high-lights. Wally Lamb’s style reminds me of early John Irving, who is also proficient at lobbing tragic curve-balls, reminding us that death is always hovering nearby. Highly recommended!

[chrisway · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I read this before, but decided to read it again. Not the best book by this author, but still good. His stories are fairly complex and he develops his characters well. They seem to ring true which I appreciate.

[casanders2015 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This book was very long and methodical. It covers a wide variety of topics most of which have nothing to do with the title. A good look at how we negotiate life's ups and downs, which in this book are mostly downers!

[jeniwren_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This is a massive book which begins with Caellum Quirk a teacher at Littleton ,Colorado conversing with a former student who goes on to become one of the Columbine killers. His wife, Maureen is then caught up in the tragedy which leaves her shell shocked and suffering PTSD . There are many threads to the story, a young troubled teen who adopts Maureen as her mother, financial woes have Caellum let out the upstairs rooms of his house to a couple fleeing hurricane Katrina, Caellum finds some old diaries that have links to his past about his true identity within his family etc etc...... The novel loses some focus at times on the central characters and I found flat spots where it became a bit frustrating and I put it down for a while to read other books but it is ultimately worth the effort and hence the high score I believe it deserves. Oprah will love it.

[dreamydress48 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

post-trau·mat·ic stress dis·or·der (n.) : a condition of persistent mental and emotional stress occurring as a result of injury or severe psychological shock, typically involving disturbance of sleep and constant vivid recall of the experience, with dulled responses to others and to the outside world.This book made my mind spin round and round; I’m still trying to connect all the dots days after finishing it. Caelum Quirk and his wife Maureen suffer damaging effects after the Columbine shootings, where they are both employed. The events of that day have far-reaching consequences, and Caelum is forced to retreat back to his hometown farm in Connecticut.There among his family’s heirlooms and childhood memories, Caelum’s ancestors speak to him, and in the process help him come to terms with his identity and history. It’s said that history often repeats itself, and the ironies of past meeting present, although hard to follow at all times, was skillfully crafted. It took me about a month to get through this book, and in the meantime had read The Good Soldiers, which touched a lot on PTSD, a common theme throughout this book as well. A great novel! Hefty in size and theme, but worth the time and effort.

[amanaceerdh · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

i am so surprised and disappointed that i didn't finish this book. when i first started reading i was thinking "wow, this is definitely going to be a five star book." i loved it. then, about 400 pages in all these new characters started popping up and i just couldn't get into their story. so i feel that if mr. lamb would've made the book shorter i would've absolutely loved it. i still love his writing though and will still read more books of his in the future if he continues to write.

[shequiltz · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Excellent through the first half of the book (in Colorado). Started to lose interest in all the details of the history of his family, and confused about all the "L" named characters. Lillian, Lizzie, Lydia, Lolly. But then I regained my interest during the last 3rd of the book and it was nicely tied up. I'd recommend it, but it's a serious time commitment.

[luli81_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I have just finished "The hour I first believed" and I am sitting in front of the computer with contradictory feelings. As a declared fan of Lamb's former novels, I still think he is a genius in portraying the human soul. His grasp of emotional intelligence and his skill in exposing human nature and its inner ups and downs, are masterly laid out to the reader in both a crude and tender way. The same as in his previous novels, you end up knowing each character as if it was a real human being, with its own flaws and limitations.Having said that, I also have to admit that if this had been my first novel by Lamb, I might not have been so taken up with the author. The formula doesn't work as much as it does in "I know this much is true" or in "She's come undone". With Lamb's last work, I had to force myself to keep on reading as there where some tedious passages difficult to absorb. The thing is that there's material in this book for at least eight different novels:The story of Caelum Quirk, a teacher at Columbine High School at the time of the shootings in April 1999, and his wife Maureen, who also works there as a nurse and who survives the shootings while Caelum is called away by an urgent family business. I was completely shaken by the description of the killings, the facts were exposed in a journalist's style, without literary ornaments, which made all the recollection more real and hard to take in.After the killings we witness Maureen's psychological decay and Caelum's futile attempts to bring his estranged wife back to normality again. In a nearly decomposing marriage, they decide to move to the old Quirk's family farm in Connecticut.The story starts to get complicated when Maureen is incarcerated for killing a boy while driving under the effect of some anti-depressants and Caelum is left alone in the farm with the heavy burden of his old ancestors, who hide dark secrets which will change Caelum's understanding of life.Let's say the book could be more like and essay regarding controversial and actual subjects such as gratuity violence in schools, the condemnation of wars and the abuse of power, the ethical concept of victim or guilty and whether the punishing system is fair, and finally, the whole American history seen through the eyes of Caelum's ancestors.Mix all that complicate subjects with the emotional display of a deeply well described character who goes through all kind of dreadful events and who has to learn to overcome them, emerging a wiser but a humbler person. Caelum comes to accept the inevitable but also, for the first time in his life, starts to believe.So, a too much ambitious project? Maybe too presumptuous? I don't know the answers.I only can say that I was moved by the end of the story, and if a novel can make you feel something it means that the message gets through somehow.All in all, a difficult but a humbling experience, maybe not for a five stars rate, but still worth the effort."Beware! He who goes questing for what he wants may discover, along the way, what he needs.""Our ancestors move along with us, in underground rivers and springs too deep for chaos to reach.""What I do know is that we are powerless to whoever or whatever god is."

[hemlokgang · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Wally Lamb has the ability to create an interwoven tapestry of plot lines which result in a profoundly meaningful experience for the reader. The main themes of this story are: love, chaos and the bifurcation it engenders. In this story, a butterfly truly creates a tidal wave over time. A couple of favorite phrases are, "When a woman surenders her freedom, she does not have to surrender her dignity" and "Sometimes when you're looking for what you want, you run smack into what you need." A complex, cross-generational, contemporary and relevant novel. Loved it!