As mentioned in previous reviews of his work, he sets all of his fiction in and around the not-so-fictional town of Three Rivers, Connecticut. It's no secret that I am a huge Wally Lamb fan, and have been for some time. At first unnerved by these ethereal apparitions, Felix comes to look forward to his encounters with Lois, who is later joined by the spirits of other celluloid muses.Īgainst the backdrop of a kaleidoscopic convergence of politics and pop culture, family secrets, and Hollywood iconography, Felix gains an enlightened understanding of the pressures and trials of the women closest to him, and of the feminine ideals and feminist realities that all women, of every era, must face. There’s his daughter Aliza, a Gen Y writer for New York Magazine who is trying to align her post-modern feminist beliefs with her lofty career ambitions his sister, Frances, with whom he once shared a complicated bond of kindness and cruelty and Verna, a fiery would-be contender for the 1951 Miss Rheingold competition, a beauty contest sponsored by a Brooklyn-based beer manufacturer that became a marketing phenomenon for two decades. In these magical movies, the medium of film becomes the lens for Felix to reflect on the women who profoundly impacted his life. Lois invites Felix to revisit-and in some cases relive-scenes from his past as they are projected onto the cinema’s big screen. One evening, while setting up a film in the projectionist booth, he’s confronted by the ghost of Lois Weber, a trailblazing motion picture director from Hollywood’s silent film era. I’ll Take You There centers on Felix, a film scholar who runs a Monday night movie club in what was once a vaudeville theater. If you have to read this book do it on a very long summer vacation (but then again, why ruin the vacation?) or, better yet, wait for the movie.Source: copy received from TLC Book Tours in exchange for an honest review The bottom line, however, is that I have read several other books that were far more enlightening, not as frustrating or time consuming, and actually a pleasurable - books that I looked forward to, like a visit with a good friend, not drudgery like a boring class project or a frustrating one-sided conversation with someone who doesn't come up for air. So, if you can stay with it until this point when the simultaneous stories become further enmeshed - just when you're comfortable and remembering the particulars of the current characters the story jumps to another distant time and other set of complex characters and does this continually throughout - it does offer some entertainment and insights. I only stayed with the book because a friend remarked favorably on Lamb's writing ability.Īfter around the 600th page the story became more interesting with some colorful humor, unexpected twists, and sickening darkness. I initially selected the book because it seemed like an interesting story and Lamb's previous book was a NY Times bestseller. More often than not it felt like a waste of precious time (And who can afford to do that these days?). This nearly 900-page book wins the contest for taking me the longest to read but that's mostly because the first 600 pages were filled with so much meaningless, schizophrenic psycho-babble that the book was difficult to continue picking back up. I Know This Much Is Tru e is a masterfully told story of alienation and connection, power and abuse, devastation and renewal-an unforgettable masterpiece. Coming to terms with his life and lineage, Dominick struggles to find forgiveness and finally rebuild himself beyond the haunted shadow of his troubled twin. Dominick is forced to care for his brother as well as confront dark secrets and pain he has buried deep within himself-a journey of the soul that takes him beyond his blue-collar New England town to Sicily's Mount Etna, the birthplace of his grandfather and namesake. USA Today Dominick Birdsey, a forty-year-old housepainter living in Three Rivers, Connecticut, finds his subdued life greatly disturbed when his identical twin brother Thomas, a paranoid schizophrenic, commits a shocking act of self-mutilation. It's hard to read and to stop reading, and impossible to forget. An exercise in soul-baring storytelling-with the soul belonging to 20th-century America itself. #1 New York Times Bestseller and Oprah Book Club selection Thoughtful.
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