Oprah Winfrey nailed it – “It’s not just a book, it’s a life experience”. And oh, what a twisting and turning life experience within the 900 pages of an incredibly engaging novel. Multi-themed and multi-generational, I Know This Much Is True, Wally Lamb, will take you on a rollercoaster ride that you will not want to get off. Ever. Yes, a life experience indeed!
Dominick and Thomas Birdsey are identical twins living in the fictional town of Three Rivers, Connecticut. Dominick is mentally typical, but Thomas is a paranoid schizophrenic. They were raised in a chaotic and abusive household. Ray, their adoptive step-father, was a former military man with an explosive temper. He was abusive to all of them, but his prime target was Thomas. Concettina, their mother, was a quiet, gentle, skittish woman plagued with a cleft lip and an inability to stand up to her husband. The identity of their biological father was unknown, but revealed much later in the book.
Dominick’s adulthood is even more complicated. He continues to struggle with the ramifications of his brother’s illness and his own lost childhood. He carries these issues into his marriage, which finally comes to a breaking point following the tragic death of his infant daughter. When Concettina is diagnosed with terminal cancer, Dominick promises to take care of Thomas after she is gone. A few years into this enormous undertaking, Thomas visits a public library, pulls out a knife, and cuts off his own hand in protest of the Gulf War. He’s then committed to a maximum security asylum. Dominick struggles to protect his brother from maltreatment in a flawed system that has no regard for human dignity, but he is losing his own life in the process. Dominick finds himself torn between his dedication to his brother and mounting resentment over what that is costing him.
Also presented in this novel is the intriguing backstory of Concettina’s father, Domenico Tempesto. After his mother dies, Dominick discovers an abundance of ancestral history in the pages of his immigrant grandfather’s detailed memoir. Domenico married his wife, Ignazia (Concettina’s mother), right after meeting her and in exchange for a dowry. Ignazia was in love with another man. She wanted nothing to do with Domenico, and this forced marriage threw her into a depression. Prosperine, Ignazia’s pipe-smoking, domineering sister, was part of the package and came to live with Ignazia and Domenico in their new home. The toxic dysfunction and abuse started immediately. When Domenico beat Ignazia on their wedding night, Prosperine promised to mutilate him if he ever hurt her sister again. That incident was just the beginning. The more Dominick reads, the more he learns about his delusional grandfather, generations plagued by mental illnesses, and the heartbreaking details of his mother’s own troubled childhood.
As with all of Lamb’s books, I Know This Much Is True offers rich layers of multiple themes: love, shame, loss, survival, abuse of power, suicide, child murder, family dysfunction, and of course the effects of mental illness on family dynamics. Lamb gives a poignant and moving presentation of just how heavily the mental illness of one weighs on many, falling like bricks upon the laps of each and every family member, and tormenting generation after generation. The love, commitment, and exhausting efforts of loved ones are met with the grim reality of their own utter powerlessness, which was felt deeply throughout the book. The imagery and descriptive details put the reader right alongside the characters, feeling the rising tension, the stress of unbalanced family function, the monumental sacrifices followed by resentment and guilt, the uphill battle against a broken system, and the heartache of a loved one’s tortured existence. I Know This Much Is True is an extremely intense, heavy, multi-layered novel that brings dark issues to the table in a deeply descriptive, affective, and honest manner. We are reminded that every generation contributes to family dysfunction, and despite interventions, we are still forever shaped by our beginnings. Tightly written across 900 pages, this novel is well worth the time and emotional investment. Lamb has done an excellent job and I enjoyed every page of this “life experience”. I absolutely loved this book and highly recommend it to adult readers.
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“I wish people could understand that the brain is the most important organ of our body. Just because you can’t see mental illness like you could see a broken bone, doesn’t mean it’s not as detrimental or devastating to a family or an individual” – Demi Lovato
See my review for Wally Lamb’s The Hour I First Believed here.