About the Author

Wally Lamb is the beloved author of She’s Come Undone and I Know This Much Is True, and the editor of Couldn’t Keep It To Myself, a previous volume of writing from the writing workshop he runs at the York Correctional Institution.

Reviews

"Thoughtful...heart-wrenching....An exercise in soul-baring storytelling--with the soul belonging to 20th-century America itself. It's hard to read and to stop reading, and impossible to forget." -- USA Today"A gratifying saga of loss and redemption." -- People"[A] tour de force that sweeps the reader along in its swift emotional current....A work of astonishing craftsmanship, structural symmetry, and literary self-awareness...Read it and weep." -- St. Louis Post-Dispatch"Dominick Birdsey is an epic hero and his story an inspiring, darkly comic tale of redemption--a late twentieth-century Les Miserables." -- Glamour"Never grapples with anything less than life's biggest questions. . . . Lamb clearly aims to be a modern-day Dostoevsky with a pop sensibility." -- New York Times Book Review"A fully developed and triumphantly resolved exploration of one man's suffering and redemption." -- Publishers Weekly, starred review"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...this is a masterpiece." -- Lisa Ko, author of The Leavers"The saga of the century. Best, most wonderful, most dramatic, most powerful. There are no superlatives impressive enough to describe this, another Lamb masterpiece." -- Oakland Press"You couldn't ask for a more beguiling summer read." -- Entertainment Weekly

In his second novel (after She's Come Undone, LJ 5/1/92), Lamb details the pain and perversions of generations of dysfunctional families in the struggle between twin brothers at midlife. The Birdsey brothers are as different in nature as they are identical in appearance: Thomas, the sweet one, favors their meek, harelipped mother, while Dominick is strong and angry like the Sicilian grandfather for whom he was named. When paranoid schizophrenic Thomas, believing himself an agent of God, cuts off his right arm in the public library to try to avert war in the Persian Gulf, DominickÄhis love for Thomas tainted by guilt and resentmentÄonce again becomes his brother's protector. But the psychologist treating Thomas sees Dominick as the twin who might be saved, and together they examine Dominick's childhood with a bullying stepfather, the marriage that failed after the death of an infant daughter, and the newly recovered autobiography of his grandfather. Lamb's craftsmanship and characterizations are exceptional, but this litany of suffering is overwhelming, leavened only slightly by the last few pages, and the ongoing analysis leaves little for thoughtful readers to ponder or discuss. Fine work, relentless in its effect.ÄMichele Leber, Fairfax Cty. P.L., Arlington, VA

"Thoughtful...heart-wrenching....An exercise in soul-baring storytelling--with the soul belonging to 20th-century America itself. It's hard to read and to stop reading, and impossible to forget." -- USA Today"A gratifying saga of loss and redemption." -- People"[A] tour de force that sweeps the reader along in its swift emotional current....A work of astonishing craftsmanship, structural symmetry, and literary self-awareness...Read it and weep." -- St. Louis Post-Dispatch"Dominick Birdsey is an epic hero and his story an inspiring, darkly comic tale of redemption--a late twentieth-century Les Miserables." -- Glamour"Never grapples with anything less than life's biggest questions. . . . Lamb clearly aims to be a modern-day Dostoevsky with a pop sensibility." -- New York Times Book Review"A fully developed and triumphantly resolved exploration of one man's suffering and redemption." -- Publishers Weekly, starred review"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...this is a masterpiece." -- Lisa Ko, author of The Leavers"The saga of the century. Best, most wonderful, most dramatic, most powerful. There are no superlatives impressive enough to describe this, another Lamb masterpiece." -- Oakland Press"You couldn't ask for a more beguiling summer read." -- Entertainment Weekly