The Hour I First Believed is the third work of Wally Lamb that I have read (I'm pretty sure it is only his third full-length novel). I read the second book (I Know This Much is True), and now this one, because of how much I loved She's Come Undone. I have liked each book a little bit less than the one before it. Granted, the time in between reading each one was substantial (three books over 13 years) so my tastes have surely changed. Overall, I do recommend this book because the characters are believable and the "point" of the story is presented uniquely.
The "point" is that the events of our past continue to lurk within us and drive our behavior throughout the rest of our lives. This novel takes this idea to the extreme, revolving primarily around the tragedy at Columbine and analyzing Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. Reading about the very real events and names of victims from Columbine made me uncomfortable in this otherwise fictional story, in a way that I would not have felt if I was reading a non-fictional account. I guess what bothered me was the idea that Lamb was capitalizing on that evil.
Like the characters, the storyline eventually moves on from, but does not forget, Columbine. Lamb does a good job of developing the main character and how he learns about who he really is.
In what I know recognize as Lamb's typical fashion, there are a couple of unnecessarily sexually-explicit passages. I wonder if Lamb himself has experienced deep soul-searching like his characters, realizing why he is driven to these habits...
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