Book 34: I Know This Much Is True

I Know This Much Is True, by Wally Lamb, is a 900-page monster of a novel! I was able to read most of it in the car, riding back and forth to Kansas. I'd periodically tell Jason what was going on, and his response was, "Isn't that way too much to be happening in ONE story?"

Well… only barely too much. I think that if the protagonist’s girlfriend had only had normal problems, it would have been the right amount of trouble and disfunction for 900 pages.

Lamb handled the complicated, multi-generational story well. It would have been a complete mess in less skilled hands. It contains:

* a set of adult twins (one is schizophrenic and our protagonist is not)
* their mother, a mousy victim of bullying men
* her father, a self-aggrandizing bully
* her husband, a fatherless "I'll make men out of you yet, twins!” bully
* the non-schizophrenic twin's ex-wife and his incredibly messed up girlfriend (who doesn't mind being bullied)

The main character is Dominick, the twin who is not schizophrenic. He is trying to help his brother, Thomas, who believes he has been assigned by God to stop the Iraqi war from occurring. To get President Bush's attention, he cuts off his right hand ("if your right hand offends you, cut it off," says the Bible). Then Thomas has to live in a max security institution, which sets Dominick on a mission to save him.

Both twins, and their bully grandfather, have ideas of themselves as being chosen for a special purpose. Dominick feels on some level that he could have saved his brother in the past, and he's trying to make up for it now. Thomas thinks he can instigate world peace. Grandpa believed he was an example for his brothers, his village, his neighborhood in America, even all Italian immigrants.

Dominick struggles against any sort of vulnerability. Like his grandfather and his step-father, he thinks that being caring or sweet or thoughtful, or showing any emotion other than anger is shameful. Thomas was always sweet and kind and willing to display vulnerability, and Dominick hated that about him, thinking it made him a target for bullying.

Some major questions arise:

* Why did schizophrenia happen to Thomas and not Dominick? Why are any of us “chosen” as victims or winners or saviors?
* Can we ever make up for our past misdeeds?
* Are we doomed by our families’ legacies or can we choose to be different?




Also, this book mentions In Watermelon Sugar by Richard Brautigan, which I read in high school,loaned to me by my friend Chelsea and her mom. I've never heard mention of it anywhere else, though I understand that he was quite famous as The Last of the Beat Writers.

A good old '60s trippy counterculture novel, if I remember correctly. Hm. I may have to put it on my to-read-again list. I really like it when one books leads to another.