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A review by madeleinegeorge
I Know This Much Is True by Wally Lamb
5.0
One of the best books I have ever had the good fortune of reading. Entirely worth every one of the (at least in my edition) thousand pages. What a journey, what a tale, what a life. Lamb is singular in his voice and in his talent. IKTMIT is a thoroughly researched novel about twin-hood and mental illness, violence and generational pain, forgiveness and secrets, narrative, documentation, love, loss. Etc. When to walk away from a situation instead of just through. When not to forgive. And how to forgive when it is warranted, when it is earned. If you read any book this summer-- let it be this one. What a Gift.
Essentials:
“ ‘That’s the trouble with survival of the fittest, isn’t it, Dominick? The corpse at your feet. That little inconvenience.’ His voice, I remember, was cool and rational. To this day, what he said was a mystery to me. To this day, I can’t decide if it was his craziness or his sanity talking.”
“We never really fought. Fighting took too much energy. Fighting would have ripped the scab right off the raw truth-- that either God was so hateful that He’d singled us out for this (Dessa’s theory) or that there was no God (mine). Life didn’t have to make sense, I’d concluded: that was the big joke.”
“ ‘The myths of the world are laden with twins,’ she said. ‘It’s a fascinating aspect of the collective unconscious, really. The ultimate solution to human alienation. I assure you Mr. Birdsey, whatever burdens you bear as a twin, the untwinned world is quite envious.”
“Story. It is the way we teach our children to cope with a world too large and chaotic for them to comprehend. A world that seems, at times, too random. Too indifferent.”
** “You are merely giving me a tour of the museum. Your museum of pain. Your sanctuary of justifiable indignation. [...] We all superintend such a place, I suppose, although some of us are more painstaking curators than others. That is the category in which I would certainly put you, Dominick. You are a meticulous steward of the pain and injustices people have visited upon you. Or, if you prefer, we could call you a scrupulous coroner .” **
“Free fall was probably going to hurt like hell when I hit the bottom, but goddamn if the ride down wasn’t a rush.”
** “I am not a smart man, particularly, but one day, at long last, I stumbled from the dark woods of my own, and my family’s, and my country’s past, holding in my hands these truths: that love grows from the rich loams of forgiveness; that mongrels make good dogs; that the evidence of God exists in the roundness of things.”
Essentials:
“ ‘That’s the trouble with survival of the fittest, isn’t it, Dominick? The corpse at your feet. That little inconvenience.’ His voice, I remember, was cool and rational. To this day, what he said was a mystery to me. To this day, I can’t decide if it was his craziness or his sanity talking.”
“We never really fought. Fighting took too much energy. Fighting would have ripped the scab right off the raw truth-- that either God was so hateful that He’d singled us out for this (Dessa’s theory) or that there was no God (mine). Life didn’t have to make sense, I’d concluded: that was the big joke.”
“ ‘The myths of the world are laden with twins,’ she said. ‘It’s a fascinating aspect of the collective unconscious, really. The ultimate solution to human alienation. I assure you Mr. Birdsey, whatever burdens you bear as a twin, the untwinned world is quite envious.”
“Story. It is the way we teach our children to cope with a world too large and chaotic for them to comprehend. A world that seems, at times, too random. Too indifferent.”
** “You are merely giving me a tour of the museum. Your museum of pain. Your sanctuary of justifiable indignation. [...] We all superintend such a place, I suppose, although some of us are more painstaking curators than others. That is the category in which I would certainly put you, Dominick. You are a meticulous steward of the pain and injustices people have visited upon you. Or, if you prefer, we could call you a scrupulous coroner .” **
“Free fall was probably going to hurt like hell when I hit the bottom, but goddamn if the ride down wasn’t a rush.”
** “I am not a smart man, particularly, but one day, at long last, I stumbled from the dark woods of my own, and my family’s, and my country’s past, holding in my hands these truths: that love grows from the rich loams of forgiveness; that mongrels make good dogs; that the evidence of God exists in the roundness of things.”