I Know This Much is True [Hardcover]

‘A triumph of simple beauty’
Time

‘I Know This Much Is True never grapples with anything less than life’s biggest questions… a modern-day Dostoyevsky’
New York Times

‘Every now and then a book comes along that sets new standards for writers and readers alike. Wally Lamb’s latest novel is stunning – and even that might be an understatement’
Associated Press

‘Lamb creates a nuanced picture of a flawed but decent man. And the questions that permeate the novel… contribute to a fully developed and triumphantly resolved exploration of one man’s suffering and redemption’
Publishers Weekly

‘A modern Greek tragedy… [Lamb’s] success is to present this with terrific readability, tenderness, optimism and, most surprisingly, wit… The hallmark of the book is fine writing and a commendable depth of characterisation’
The Times

‘Wally Lamb’s achievement is to force you to feel Dominick’s pain… the events in Dominick’s everyday nightmare are presented with a sneaky simplicity which generates emotional tension’
Daily Telegraph

When you're the same brother of a schizophrenic identical twin, the tricky thing about saving yourself is the blood it leaves on your bands--the little inconvenience of the look-alike corpse at your feet. And if you're into both survival of the fittest and being your brother's keeper--if you've promised your dying mother--them say so long to sleep and hello to the middle of the night. Grab a book or a beer. Get used to Letterman's gap-toothed smile of the absurd, or the view of the bedroom ceiling, or the influence of random selection. Take it from a godless insomniac. Take it from the uncrazy twin--the guy who beat the biochemical rap.

Dominick Birdsey's entire life has been compromised and constricted by anger and fear, by the paranoid schizophrenic twin brother he both deeply loves and resents, and by the past they shared with their adoptive father, Ray, a split-and-polish ex-Navy man (the five-foot-six-inch sleeping giant who snoozed upstairs weekdays in thespare room and built submarines at night), and their long-suffering mother, Concettina, a timid woman with a harelip that made her shy and self-conscious: She holds a loose fist to her face to cover her defective mouth--her perpetual apology to the world for a birth defect over which she had no control.

Born in the waning moments of 1949 and the opening minutes of 1950, the twins are physical mirror images who grow into separate yet connected entities: the seemingly strong and protective yet fearful Dominick, his mother's watchful "monkey"; and the seemingly weak and sweet yet noble Thomas, his mother"s gentle "bunny." From childhood, Dominick fights for both separation and wholeness--and ultimately self-protection--in a house of fear dominated by Ray, a bully who abuses his power over these stepsons whose biological father is a mystery. 'I was still afraid of his anger but saw how he punished weakness--pounced on it. Out of self-preservation I hid my fear', Dominick confesses. As for Thomas, he just never knew how to play defense. He just didn't get it.

But Dominick's talent for survival comes at an enormous cost, including the breakup of his marriage to the warm, beautiful Dessa, whom he still loves. And it will be put to the ultimate test when Thomas, a Bible-spouting zealot, commits an unthinkable act that threatens the tenuous balance of both his and Dominick's lives.

To save himself, Dominick must confront not only the pain of his past but the dark secrets he has locked deep within himself, and the sins of his ancestors--a quest that will lead him beyond the confines of his blue-collar New England town to the volcanic foothills of Sicily's Mount Etna, where his ambitiousand vengefully proud grandfather and a namesake Domenico Tempesta, the sostegno del famiglia, was born. Each of the stories Ma told us about Papa reinforced the message that he was the boss, that he ruled the roost, that what he said went. Searching for answers, Dominick turns to the whispers of the dead, to the pages of his grandfather's handwritten memoir, "The History of Domenico Onofrio Tempesta, a Great Man from Humble Beginnings."

Rendered with touches of magic realism, Domenico's fablelike tale--in which monkeys enchant and religious statues weep--becomes the old man's confession--an unwitting legacy of contrition that reveals the truths of Domenico's life, Dominick learns that power, wrongly used, defeats the oppressor as well as the oppressed, and now, picking through the humble shards of his deconstructed life, he will search for the courage and love to forgive, to expiate his and his ancestor's; transgressions, and finally to rebuild himself beyond the haunted shadow of his twin.

Set against the vivid panoply of twentieth-century America and filled with richly drawn, memorable characters, this deeply moving and thoroughly satisfying novel brings to light humanity's deepest needs and fears, our aloneness, our desire for love and acceptance, our struggle to survive at all costs. Joyous, mystical, and exquisitely written, "I Know This Much is True" is an extraordinary reading experience that will leave no reader untouched. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.