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List Price: $27.50Amazon.com's Price: $19.53 You Save: $7.97 (29%)Prices subject to change.
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Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN: 9780060391621
Edition: 1st
ISBN: 0060391626
Label: Harper
Manufacturer: Harper
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 901
Publication Date: June 14, 1998
Publisher: Harper
Release Date: June 03, 1998
Studio: Harper
Alternate Versions: Click to Display
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Editorial Review:
Amazon.com Review:
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
Product Description:
With his stunning debut novel, She's Come Undone, Wally Lamb won the adulation of critics and readers with his mesmerizing tale of one woman's painful yet triumphant journey of self-discovery. Now, this brilliantly talented writer returns with I Know This Much Is True, a heartbreaking and poignant multigenerational saga of the reproductive bonds of destruction and the powerful force of forgiveness. A masterpiece that breathtakingly tells a story of alienation and connection, power and abuse, devastation and renewal--this novel is a contemporary retelling of an ancient Hindu myth. A proud king must confront his demons to achieve salvation. Change yourself, the myth instructs, and you will inhabit a renovated world.
When you're the same brother of a schizophrenic identical twin, the tricky thing about saving yourself is the blood it leaves on your bands--the little inconvenience of the look-alike corpse at your feet. And if you're into both survival of the fittest and being your brother's keeper--if you've promised your dying mother--then say so long to sleep and hello to the middle of the night. Grab a book or a beer. Get used to Letterman's gap-toothed smile of the absurd, or the view of the bedroom ceiling, or the influence of random selection. Take it from a godless insomniac. Take it from the uncrazy twin--the guy who beat the biochemical rap.
Dominick Birdsey's entire life has been compromised and constricted by anger and fear, by the paranoid schizophrenic twin brother he both deeply loves and resents, and by the past they shared with their adoptive father, Ray, a spit-and-polish ex-Navy man (the five-foot-six-inch sleeping giant who snoozed upstairs weekdays in the spare room and built submarines at night), and their long-suffering mother, Concettina, a timid woman with a harelip that made her shy and self-conscious: She holds a loose fist to her face to cover her defective mouth--her perpetual apology to the world for a birth defect over which she'd had no control.
Born in the waning moments of 1949 and the opening minutes of 1950, the twins are physical mirror images who grow into separate yet connected entities: the seemingly strong and protective yet fearful Dominick, his mother's watchful "monkey"; and the seemingly weak and sweet yet noble Thomas, his mother's gentle "bunny." From childhood, Dominick fights for both separation and wholeness--and ultimately self-protection--in a house of fear dominated by Ray, a bully who abuses his power over these stepsons whose biological father is a mystery. I was still afraid of his anger but saw how he punished weakness--pounced on it. Out of self-preservation I hid my fear, Dominick confesses. As for Thomas, he just never knew how to play defense. He just didn't get it.
But Dominick's talent for survival comes at an enormous cost, including the breakup of his marriage to the warm, beautiful Dessa, whom he still loves. And it will be put to the ultimate test when Thomas, a Bible-spouting zealot, commits an unthinkable act that threatens the tenuous balance of both his and Dominick's lives.
To save himself, Dominick must confront not only the pain of his past but the dark secrets he has locked deep within himself, and the sins of his ancestors--a quest that will lead him beyond the confines of his blue-collar New England town to the volcanic foothills of Sicily 's Mount Etna, where his ambitious and vengefully proud grandfather and a namesake Domenico Tempesta, the sostegno del famiglia, was born. Each of the stories Ma told us about Papa reinforced the message that he was the boss, that he ruled the roost, that what he said went.
Average Rating: 
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A fascinating well written novel centering on a pair of identical twins, I Know this Much Is True is a tale of epic proportions. The story is about the tension between a pair of identical twins. Dominick is normal and Thomas is a very sick paranoid schizophrenic. Lamb ,who tells the story in flashbacks, suceeds in creating several multi-dimensional characters and unusual plot twists. I was hesitant about reading an Oprah selection, because many of the novels she selects are so mass market. Not so this one. She has also used her forum to promote authors who share her ethnicity without more. Wally lamb is a white male. The opening of the story presents us with a delusional Thomas who has chopped off his hand in the public library to atone for the military sins of the U.S. in the gulf. By this act he hopes to save the American people and their souls. Like many mentally ill people, Thomas is very religious and receives messages from a supreme being. He is promptly interred in a hospital ... Read More
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I just finished this book two minutes ago and had to review it. What an amazing read. I hadn't read a novel in a really long time, but this one did not feel like the 880-page monster it looks like (in hardcover). I loved it.
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I went into this book blind. I have not read "She's Come Undone". I was a little intimidated by the size of the book to begin with. I also read some reviews that said that all 900 pages were not needed.
I couldn't disagree more. I enjoyed nearly every page of this book. I have not wanted to put down the book since I started. I think this was very well written and I look forward to reading more of his work.
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This very entertaining book "I know This Much Is True" is 900 pages. Long read by anyone's standards, but I enjoyed every page. It's one man's search of the self. It's starts off with a gruesome seen of the character Thomas actually slicing off his hand. He claims it's what God wanted .It kind of goes hand to hand with another book I'm reading that's non-fiction about what God wants entitled "The Enlightenment, What God Told Me After One Million Prayers: A Message for Everyone" by John H. Eagan. I think you will like it just as much.
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To put it simply, I read a lot of books - fiction, nonfiction, some best-seller fluff once in a while - and this is my favorite book ever.
I had it with me on a trip through Norway, and instead of watching the amazing landscape, the mountains, the fjords, etc... I was reading this book because I couldn't put it down.
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