Oprah Book Club® Selection, June 1998: What if you were a 40-year-old housepainter, horrifically abused, emotionally unavailable, and your identical twin was a paranoid schizophrenic who believed in public self-mutilation? You'd either be a guest on the Jerry Springer Show or Dominick Birdsey, the antihero, narrator, and bad-juju magnet of I Know This Much Is True. Somewhere in the recesses of this hefty 912-page tome lurks an honest, moving account of one man's search, denial, and acceptance of self. This is no easy feat considering his grandfather seemed to take parenting tips from the SS and his grandmother was a possible teenage murderess, his stepfather a latent sadist, and his brother, Thomas, a politically motivated psychopath. Not one to break with tradition, Dominick continues the dysfunctional legacy with rape, a failed marriage, a nervous breakdown, SIDS, a car crash, and a racist conspiracy against a coworker--just to name a few.
A stretch, both literally and figuratively from his Oprah-christened bestseller, She's Come Undone, Lamb's book ventures outside the confines of the tightly bound beach read and marathons through a detailed, neatly cataloged account of every familial travesty and personal failure one can endure. At its heart lies Freud's "return of the repressed": the more we try to deny who we are, the more we become what we fear. Lamb takes Freud's psychological abstraction to the realm of everyday living, packing his novel with tender, believable dialogue and thoughtful observation. --Rebekah Warren
I don't find many books that move me but I absolutely loved this book! It's deeply moving and covers so many aspects of human behavior and life in general. I didn't even know it was an Oprah read ( personally wouldn't have cared) BUT I loved this book so much that when I was done, I was going through withdrawals.
writes,
I really disliked this book and quite frankly, was bored by it overall. This was a book club pick and after about 1/3 of the way through it, I read through to the end purely in devotion to the person who had selected it for that months reading...
In direct opposition to the book--I'll keep my review short and sweet...
The lead male is whiny, and a typical excuse maker and blamer. His entire life is a mess because of someone else, or because he couldn't take ownership--never because of his self-centeredness or poor choices. Nothing is ever his fault. It was all I could do to get through the book. Typical not-my-fault schlock.
B O R I N G . . .
writes,
VERRRRY GOOD book. It's LONG - 900+ pages and you still won't want it to end. GREAT!!!!
