|
I Know This Much Is True |
|
|
|
by Wally Lamb |
|
(front cover of book) |
|
|
|
|
| ___________________ |
||
|
|
||
| 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.
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 |
||
|
|
||
|
||
|
|
||
|
|