I Know This Much Is True | Wally Lamb

This book was my introduction to Lamb’s novels. And I really loved it. He’s a great storyteller with believable characters who are quirky and live impossible lives.

This is the story of Dominick Birdsey and his schizophrenic twin brother Thomas. His life is a constant search for his identity and his place in a family dominated by his step-father Ray. Dominick finds and reads his Sicilian grandfather’s memoir and discovers his family’s roots and its darkest secrets.

There is a lot going on with the characters. Thomas is unstable though on medication and Dominick takes it upon himself to see him through hospitalisations and the horror of self-mutilation. Dominick's only child dies of SIDS and his lover's child ends up with HIV.

Lamb's skill as a storyteller is putting all these characters on the page and making the story plausible. Through larger-than-life people he lets us explore different outcomes from the ones we might search for in real life.

The reason I like reading this book is the mixture of characters and their exploration of themes we can all relate to like our desire to belong, being alone, wanting to be loved and accepted. Through their lives we can come to appreciate a different perspective on our own introspection. This is a very satisfying read.

It’s also worth reading Lamb’s other novels. "The Hour I First Believed", "She's Come Undone", "I'll Fly Away"

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The Anthologist | Nicholson Baker

Here's a book I wish I'd read when I was doing English at high school. Although it's a novel it is very much a book about poetry. Paul, the protagonist is putting together an anthology of rhyming poetry but is unable to write the preface for it and this fills his whole life with uncertainty. His partner leaves in frustration but Paul thinks she will be back so focuses a lot of his attention on how to lure her. Paul's life is stuck in between everything, his days static and full of poetry. He sees everything in the context of poems he's read. He is obsessive about it and talks to the reader about poetry and so it becomes quite a didactic novel.

In between the instruction we get the narrative of his days, a book reading he's dreading, a trip to Switzerland to a conference and the handyman work he does just to pay the bills. Also the mouse who visits him in his kitchen every night.

I'm a bit ambivalent about this novel. I liked learning about poetry but I found Paul a bit too obsessive and his passive attitude a bit tedious. It's worth reading quickly and maybe going on to read some of the poets he mentions.

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