I Know This Much is True

I love me some Wally Lamb.  She's Come Undone might be my favorite book ever (though that is a hard choice).  I bought I Know This Much is True a couple years back, knowing I would love it.  I started it once and got a couple hundred pages in and then just lost interest.  This time, I had to finish it.  And I did!  Yay!
As mentioned previously, this book is ginormous.  900 pages of soul-searching redemptive modern literature... basically what Wally Lamb is known for.

The plot is incredibly complex (no surprise, since it takes so long to get through), but here's a basic run-down.  The story is told from the perspective of Dominick Birdsey, a regular Joe sort of guy in Three Rivers, Conn (the same setting as She's Come Undone).  Dom has an identical twin brother, Thomas, who has Schizophrenia and is institutionalized.  At the beginning of the book, Thomas goes into a public library and chops off one of his hands.  Yes, really.  His Schizophrenia manifests in delusions about Godly communication, and he believes that he needs to follow the Biblical dictate to cut off his right hand (if it offends thee) to get the attention of world leaders to stop the war in Iraq... the first one, that is.  Anyway, things spiral out from there.  Eventually the story encompasses the Birdsey twins, their mother and step-father, crazy Sicilian grandfather, Dom's ex-wife, Dom's friend Leo and his wife (who is also Dom's ex-wife's sister), a lesbian social worker, an Indian psychotherapist, and Ralph Drinkwater (a local Native American guy).  The story jumps back and forth in time, between Dom's childhood and the present day, and the main thrust of the book is the redemption of Dominick.  He starts out angry and isolated and unhappy and ends up "finding himself" and such. 


The book tells a really compelling story and the writing is pretty immersive, since it's all written in Dominick's voice.  I do think it was too long, though.  I enjoyed the book much more once I got past the first couple hundred pages, into the meat of the book where all the secondary characters come into play and Dominick starts to figure out that he's a bit screwed up.  I also preferred the sections of the book set in the present day, but that is mostly because the childhood stories are painful.  The Birdsey home was abusive and Thomas had some serious problems.  It is hard to read about child abuse and the initial manifestations of Schizophrenia.
The use of dialect in the book (such as yous guys), is a bit inconsistent and can be a bit jarring when it shows up, but other than that the writing is wonderful.


Overall, I give this book 8.5/10.  I would recommend it, but only if you are a patient reader with time to spare... and a stomach for some seriously sad stories.


I cheated and already started another book in audiobook format - The Friday Night Knitting Club.  A bit lighter fare.  However, in the interest of semi-consistency, here's my random number book, too:
#62: Rosalind Franklin: The Dark Lady of DNA
Hmm... I wonder how Dr. Franklin would feel about chick lit?