Tag: Connecticut

Review 2192: Act of Oblivion

~ whatmeread ~ 4 Comments

It’s hard to know where sympathies might lie in this historical novel set right after the Restoration, in 1665. On the one hand, there is Richard Nayler (a fictional character), tasked with finding and taking to trial (or later, just plain executing) those deemed responsible for killing Charles I. A mighty task, but he performs it so zealously, not minding a dirty trick or two.

On the other hand, there are Colonel Edward Whalley and his son-in-law Colonel Will Goffe (historical characters), on the list because they signed the King’s death warrant after an illegal trial. They have escaped to America, but Nayler blames them for the death of his wife (in premature labor after they broke in on a religious service on Christmas Day, deemed illegal under Cromwell, and arrested people) and is determined to catch them.

Robert Harris states that this hunt for the regicides was the greatest manhunt of the 17th century so we may assume that’s his motivation for the book. Although I’m not particularly interested in the Puritan period of New England history, certainly there are interesting things I didn’t know disclosed in this novel, like the history of New Haven. In addition, Harris depicts the wildness of New England at this time more vividly than anything else I’ve read.

Harris manages to raise the tension of the novel at the end, when Nayler, long after everyone else has lost interest, finally locates Goffe, but overall, I was too turned off by the deeds on both sides of the English Civil War (usually I favor the Royalists, but he shows just how brutal both sides were) to care much about these antagonists. I read this book for my Walter Scott Prize Project.

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Day 727: I Know This Much Is True

~ whatmeread ~ 11 Comments

Cover for I Know This Much Is TrueI have only read one other book by Wally Lamb, the more recent The Hour I First Believed, and when I began reading I Know This Much Is True, it was like deja vu all over again. In a very long novel, crass, belligerent, macho protagonist with anger issues ignores his own problems in attempting to cope with a family member with serious mental health difficulties.

In this case, Dominick Tempesta has a twin brother Thomas who is a paranoid schizophreniac. Thomas has seemed to do very well lately, so Dominick is shattered when Thomas goes to the public library one day and chops off his own hand in an effort to halt Operation Desert Storm. When Thomas is sent to Hatch, the high-security facility for the most dangerous patients, instead of Settle, where he usually goes, Dominick is convinced there is some mistake. His misgivings are confirmed when Dominick himself is severely beaten by one of Hatch’s security guards while he’s trying to get someone to call Thomas’ doctor. He begins trying to get Thomas out of there.

In his efforts, he meets with Thomas’ social worker Ms. Scheffer and with Dr. Patel, one of the therapists who is supposed to evaluate Thomas. Dr. Patel asks Dominick to discuss his and Thomas’ past with her so that she can gain more insight about Thomas. But eventually she begins treating Dominick.

So, the present-day chapters of the novel, set in the early 90s, are interspersed with chapters describing incidents from Dominick’s childhood and adolescence. These incidents include upbringing by a mild-mannered mother and abusive stepfather Ray, Dominick’s constant curiosity about the identity of his real father, Dominick’s jealousy at their mother’s favoritism for Thomas.

In the end, you get to understand and feel for Dominick, if not actively like him. His insight about himself is helped along by finding a manuscript written by his grandfather, another similarity with his other novel. This novel explores issues such as bullying and abuse, mental illness, the way Americans raise boys, the closeness of twins, the way our own history flows from the history of our parents.

As with the other book, I liked it well enough but perhaps not well enough to subject myself to another 1000 pages of Wally Lamb.

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Day 498: The Hour I First Believed

~ whatmeread ~ 9 Comments

Cover for The Hour I First BelievedThe Hour I First Believed is described on its jacket as an exploration of faith, and as such I didn’t think it would be very interesting to me. But it is really more about a man’s struggle to face the problems of his life and his own demons. It is an extremely interesting and affecting work.

Caelum Quirk is not always a likable protagonist. He has anger issues—went after his third wife’s lover with a wrench—can be withdrawn and drink too much, says the wrong thing quite often, and earned my personal disregard at the beginning of the novel by referring to two different women as a ballbuster and a nutcracker. Lamb had to work hard to get my sympathy for his character after that, but he did accomplish that by the end of the novel. Still, whether I liked Caelum or not, I couldn’t tear myself away from his story.

Caelum is trying to salvage his marriage after the wrench incident, so he and his wife Maureen decide to move away from Three Rivers, Connecticut, the town where his family has a lot of history, and get jobs in Colorado. They are settled there and are doing okay, although still having relationship issues, when Caelum is called back to Connecticut because his beloved Aunt Lolly has had a stroke. She dies shortly after he returns, and Maureen is making arrangements to come for the funeral but decides to work one more day at the high school where Caelum teaches English and she is a nurse. Unfortunately, the high school in question is Columbine, and the school day she works is the day two students go on a rampage.

Maureen would normally be out of the area of trouble, but that day she decides to help Velvet Hoon, a troubled drop-out, fill out some papers in the library. Although she is not killed, she hides in a cupboard for hours before she is found, and subsequently suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder that barely allows her to function. She also struggles with an addiction to uppers.

Caelum and Maureen move back to live on Caelum’s family farm, a place for which he has mixed but mostly negative feelings. His father was a drunk of whom he was ashamed. He remembers his grandfather as judgmental and his mother as cold. Only Lolly seemed to care for him.

Troubles are not over for Caelum and Maureen, but I don’t want to reveal more about that. Caelum must also deal with his feelings about his family. His great-great grandmother was an early fighter for abolition and women’s rights, and she was instrumental in establishing the women’s prison down the road from the farm. It had a long history of treating the women with dignity and had a low rate of recidivism until its values were changed by modern tough-on-crime politics. Caelum’s great-great grandmother’s papers are in a spare room of the house. When Caelum is forced by financial circumstances to rent part of the house to a couple evacuated from New Orleans because of Hurricane Katrina, the wife, a women’s studies graduate student, asks if she can examine them. This and other events lead Caelum to several discoveries about his family.

This novel is sprawling, even a bit messy, because it seems to want to deal with everything. It features large events such as Columbine, 9/11, and Katrina, as well as the inequity of the American justice system, PTSD, drug addiction, grief, love, trust, religion, infidelity, and other issues. It is interesting, frustrating, and ultimately worth reading.