"I Know This Much Is True," Wally Lamb's first attempt in the shadow of his bestselling debut novel "She's Come Undone," is a weighty book -- both in subject matter and sheer volume -- that tries hard to fill the shoes of its praised predecessor, but ultimately falls short.
Dominick Birdsey, the narrator of this lengthy tale, is a floundering man dealing with the schizophrenia of his twin brother, Thomas. At the novel's beginning, Thomas has cut off his hand at the wrist in an effort to protest the beginning of the Gulf War. He has done so, he tells everyone, at the behest of the voices broadcasting their messages in his head. What follows is Dominick's efforts to "run interference" for Thomas, as he calls it, in an attempt to assure the well-being of his brother without really knowing how to best straighten out his own life.
Wally Lamb was revered with "She's Come Undone" for his ability to genuinely capture the voice and feelings of a woman. Lamb's talents with voice are highlighted once again as the entirety of "I Know This Much Is True" appears to be spoken by Dominick as if to a distanced yet knowledgeable third party, with the audience as a local psychoanalyst.
Yet where the protagonist of Lamb's first novel was so pathetically sympathetic, Dominick is a hard man to get to know. His characterization is intentional, but it makes for a hard read. The protagonist, the man to whom the reader must listen for close to 900 pages, is not easily likeable. "I never claimed I was lovable," he tells the reader. "Never said I wasn't a son of a bitch."
In fact, Dominick's coarse language and oftentimes callous actions grow tiresome as the novel proceeds. "I'd agreed to meet [the doctor]... at her office in that two-story strip mall on Division Street," Dominick notes, assuming a certain familiarity with the local geography and thus leaving the reader out of full assimilation in the fictional world despite, and in fact because of, an attempt at intimacy.
The writing slips into a sloppy conversational style from occasionally prosaic and descriptive passages. Dominick is not a storyteller, and Lamb's book has a hard time succeeding with him at the helm. The reader wants to like him -- we are involved in his life, after all, and following it closely -- yet he does not make it easy.
Flashbacks to Dominick's childhood are where the interest is thus created, for it is here that the overwhelming sense of voice makes sense. Grammatical and language errors are overlooked as purposeful, for the story is told through the eyes of a child. It is only when the middle-aged Birdsey resumes the telling that the voice seems to be too much to sustain over such a large period.
It is also, however, as a result of this structure of constantly shifting time that another glitch appears, and that is Lamb's tendency to repeat fragments, ideas and occasionally whole sentences. He speaks of his desire to "run interference" for Thomas over and over again without substitute for those same words. Occasionally Dominick's words even come from the mouths of others, jarring the reader in their discordant reoccurrence.
It is as if Lamb, lost in a sea of pages, has forgotten what he has or has not included and must make sure that his central ideas are apparent. "I Know This Much Is True" thus reads as more of a first draft than a completed work, and has the feeling of a manuscript that needs a tight and careful edit.
"I Know This Much Is True" is, like Thomas, the twin left in the void after the success of "She's Come Undone." It is simultaneously hasty and plundering, and despite a creation of interest through the ultimate interweaving of stories, it is a story laden with extraneous material. The language is easy, but the reading difficult as a result. Wally Lamb's skill at voice is turned into a gimmick, one that is used excessively and thus erased of any effect.
The book, like one of its characters, is schizophrenic.
