It's Time: The Hour I First Believed by Wally Lamb

January is nearly over, and although we haven't had terrible weather, I did find myself hybernating a little. With the snow on the ground, and the skies looking gray, I was quite often tempted to make a cup of tea and cozy up in my new reading nook. I recently redecorated my home office, and as a part of the design, I incorporated an antique armchair and my favorite bits of art. I can sit comfortably with my feet up and look out the window to the back garden. No wonder I like reading so much...I feel like my pearch is a little piece of heaven!

Now on to Wally Lamb's The Hour I First Believed.

Over the course of more than 700 pages, the novel takes on major events (the Columbine High School shootings, the Iraq war, Hurricane Katrina) and weighty issues like motherhood, marriage, alienation, psychological trauma, drug addiction, chaos theory, prison reform, grief, the connection between ancestry and identity — to name just a few.

Here's a brief summary:

"When forty-seven-year-old high school teacher Caelum Quirk and his younger wife, Maureen, a school nurse, move to Littleton, Colorado, they both get jobs at Columbine High School. In April 1999, Caelum returns home to Three Rivers, Connecticut, to be with his aunt who has just had a stroke. But Maureen finds herself in the school library at Columbine, cowering in a cabinet and expecting to be killed, as two vengeful students go on a carefully premeditated, murderous rampage. Miraculously she survives, but at a cost: she is unable to recover from the trauma. Caelum and Maureen flee Colorado and return to an illusion of safety at the Quirk family farm in Three Rivers. But the effects of chaos are not so easily put right, and further tragedy ensues.

While Maureen fights to regain her sanity, Caelum discovers a cache of old diaries, letters, and newspaper clippings in an upstairs bedroom of his family's house. The colorful and intriguing story they recount spans five generations of Quirk family ancestors, from the Civil War era to Caelum's own troubled childhood. Piece by piece, Caelum reconstructs the lives of the women and men whose legacy he bears. Unimaginable secrets emerge; long-buried fear, anger, guilt, and grief rise to the surface.

As Caelum grapples with unexpected and confounding revelations from the past, he also struggles to fashion a future out of the ashes of tragedy. His personal quest for meaning and faith becomes a mythic journey that is at the same time quintessentially contemporary—and American." (Attributed to Book Browse review)

"Lamb is an amiable, credible storyteller at first. But his writing style is undistinguished, and so is his thinking; the combination leads to mind-numbing mediocrity. This novel is ill-disciplined in the extreme – in its length, its constant repetition of the same information, its sprawling, poorly integrated structure.

The volume bespeaks an arrogance. High sales thanks to the blessing of a certain talk-show host ()prah) seem to have reprieved Wally Lamb from the editorial judgment and often productive self-doubt that other writers continue to exercise in order to craft novels more humbly constrained both in scope and page count."

For more of the catty (and actually entertaining) review check out Lionel Shriver's review in the Telegraph...It's not pretty.  http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/bookreviews/3708957/The-Hour-I-First-Believed-review.html

I think that Lamb's novel is an easy read, that sprawls over many major events of the early 2000's.  It is not a literary read, more an armchair ride. I enjoyed the easy read, but I was happy to have it finally come to an end. I think his other works like She's Come Undone and This Much I Know is True are stronger.

Now, my blog is up-to-date and I feel like reading some non-fiction.








 

Pillars of the Earth...Epic...Maybe just a bit too long!

Can you ever try a bit too hard to be EPIC? Maybe so...

Ken Follett is an author that my father has enjoyed for years. Now typically, I don't enjoy spy mysteries, war and bloodshed sagas, or historical quests...Understandable then that I was not even slightly tempted to read Follett's work. That is until another mom at my daughter's hockey practice raved about Pillars of the Earth. She told me that this was her FAVORITE book of all time.

Now, FAVORITE book of all time is huge praise in my mind, so I started a quest to find this novel and give Follett as try. After about a month of looking for a second hand copy, I found it at my local Value Village for $3.99!!! (I love VV!!!)

Central plot summary: The Pillars of the Earth is the construction of a new cathedral in the fictional English town of Kingsbridge during the 12th century. But the story is really about the conflicts between the people building the cathedral and those who want to destroy it.

It is the early 12th century and England is about to erupt into civil war. The new prior of the monastery at Kingsbridge is determined to rebuild the current run down cathedral into one that will glorify God. He finds a young master builder who shares his vision of building the most beautiful cathedral in England.

Unfortunately, the local bishop is a power hungry man with other plans. He works to disrupt the prior's efforts at every turn. His frequent ally in this is a cruel and vengeful earl consumed by his own greed.

This novel is over 900 pages, and I have to say that I thought it was a bit drawn out. I like the character development and I also appreciated that Follett does create very strong female heroines. However, I did find it too long, and could have been shorter without loosing any of it's value. I would recommend this novel as an entertaining read. I have purchase the followup novel and plan to give it a read in the near future.

The Jade Peony by Wayson Choy



This novel was one of my reading group's selections. Each year we try to use the Vaughan Public Library's book club reading list to cut down on the number of books that we are forced to purchase. As it turned out VPL had a set of Wayson Choy's The Jade Peony, so we were in luck.

I've read several novels about the Japanese experience of internment in Canada during the second world war, and I found this novel interesting because it depicted the experience of being Chinese during this difficult time in Canadian history. It was an interesting opportunity to examine these events from a different, and threatened perspective.

Here's a quick summary of Choy's novel (thanks to Good Reads):

Author Wayson Choy

Chinatown, Vancouver, in the late 1930s and '40s provides the backdrop for this poignant first novel, told through the vivid reminiscences of the three younger children of an immigrant Chinese family. The siblings grapple with their individual identities in a changing world, wresting autonomy from the strictures of history, family, and poverty. Sister Jook-Liang dreams of becoming Shirley Temple and escaping the rigid, old ways of China. Adopted Second Brother Jung-Sum, struggling with his sexuality and the trauma of his childhood in China, finds his way through boxing. Third Brother Sekky, who never feels comfortable with the multitude of Chinese dialects swirling around him, becomes obsessed with war games, and learns a devastating lesson about what war really means when his 17-year-old babysitter dates a Japanese man.

Mingling with life in Canada and the horror of war are the magic, ghosts, and family secrets of Poh-Poh, or Grandmother, who is the heart and pillar of the family. Side by side, her three grandchildren survive hardships and heartbreaks with grit and humor. Like the jade peony of the title, Choy's storytelling is at once delicate, powerful, and lovely.

The Jade Peony was selected by the Literary Review of Canada as one of the "100 Most Important Books in Canadian History" in 2005. It was also an American Library Association Notable Book of the Year in 1998, and was winner of the 1995 Trillium Award (shared with Margaret Atwood).



The Cat's Table is the Cat's Meow!!!

October's read for my local book club, and what a treat Michael Ondaatje's The Cat's Table turned out to be!

Here's a good summary of the book which is taken from Good Reads:

Michael Ondaatje

Great Artwork!

"In the early 1950s, an eleven-year-old boy boards a huge liner bound for England – a ‘castle that was to cross the sea’. At mealtimes, he is placed at the lowly ‘Cat's Table’ with an eccentric group of grown-ups and two other boys, Cassius and Ramadhin. As the ship makes its way across the Indian Ocean, through the Suez Canal, into the Mediterranean, the boys become involved in the worlds and stories of the adults around them, tumbling from one adventure and delicious discovery to another, ‘bursting all over the place like freed mercury’. And at night, the boys spy on a shackled prisoner – his crime and fate a galvanizing mystery that will haunt them forever."

I enjoyed the story very much and I really love the way that Ondaatje crafts the language. He is a talented Canadian author who has written many entertaining novels. My favorite of his is Anil's Ghost. It's definitely worth a try too!

December's Book Club Exchange

December's Book Club Exchange is always a fun one. This year was not exception.

I've been very negligent of my blog lately and I have a lot of catching up to do. Maybe it was the busy Christmas season, or maybe a hit a few books that I didn't necessarily enjoy...I find it harder to write about the ones I don't like. Never mind, I will try to get caught up over the next few days.

I received Marcia Preston's The Butterfly House and hope to enjoy this one over the summer.