The Hour I First Believed

I’ve fallen in- love with Wally Lamb !A fantastic read.Buy it ! You will not be disappointed

Avec le massacre de la petite école "Sandy Hoock", ce livre est pile dans l'actualité. Mais il va au delà de la fusillade de Colombine (le thème principal du livre), puisqu'il traite de l'après, c'est à dire du traumatisme post catastrophe.Très bien écrit, profond, on ne peut pas le quitter.

"Life is messy, violent, confusing, and hopeful..."Thus the story unfolds. Caelum Quirk, a high school teacher and his younger wife Maureen, a school nurse, moved to Littleton, Colorado - they both were hired at Columbine High School - and here they hoped to start anew. In their previous home in Three Rivers, Connecticut, their marriage had begun to fracture when Maureen had a love affair with a coworker, and Caelum's response - to take a wrench to the man - landed him in legal troubles and living under a cloud. So as they begin anew, they hope to slowly piece their lives together...Until the day in April, 1999, when havoc rained upon them.Just before the horrific shootings at Columbine High School, Caelum had briefly returned to Connecticut, visiting with his aunt who had suffered a stroke. When he heard about the carnage at the high school, he returned home to Colorado in a panic, and for a few desperate hours, did not know his wife's fate. Was she still alive? Where was she?Terrified when the shooting began, Maureen had taken shelter in a cabinet, not knowing when or if she would be targeted. She survived...And the Quirks clung to the miracle of her survival. But then, Maureen seemed to crawl into a deep hole, unable to function. So the Quirks fled back to Connecticut, to the family farm, hoping to put the tragic events behind them, and to bury the aunt who has died.But nothing is simple and the disastrous changes wrought on that tragic day have left deep wounds. Suffering from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, Maureen's life continues to unravel, one day at a time. She becomes a shadow of her former self, an emaciated shell. In therapy, she makes little if any progress. And she begins to abuse the medications she takes. Caelum, too, suffers as their lives take on this new shape - controlled by the emotional chaos that has engulfed them since that day.At some point, however, Maureen seems to improve and begins working as a nurse again. But with easy access to medications, it is not long before she is addicted.Then one night, driving home from work and under the influence, Maureen hits and kills a young boy with her car.The consequences are grave. Imprisoned, Maureen begins another horrendous journey, while Caelum tries to continue teaching, but barely exists...almost as if he, too, is serving a sentence. Meanwhile, a civil lawsuit is pending.In the midst of the chaos of their lives, Caelum begins sorting through his aunt's belongings and finds diaries and documents that reveal family history, and eventually, some unimaginable secrets. As Caelum tries to reconstruct his family history in light of his findings, more dire events are uncovered.Through everything he experiences, and with all that Maureen is facing, the future looks bleak indeed.But then, as if from above, Caelum comes to realize that "We lived, lulled, on the fault line of chaos. Change could come explosively, and out of nowhere..."...and "...some explosion - as local as rifle fire, as worldwide as war - can set things reeling in a whole different direction,can cause a fork in the road. And one path may lead to disintegration, the other to a reordered world."Regeneration and hope can emerge from chaos. A reordered world can come from disintegration.Toward the end of this long and very compelling novel, even as more tragedy befalls our characters, Caelum reaches a point of believing....And a feeling of hope is restored.The Hour I First Believed: A Novel ,from the talented Wally Lamb is a thought-provoking, philosophical exploration of what happens to people - ordinary individuals - when disaster strikes.By Laurel-Rain SnowAuthor of:Web of Tyranny, etc.

I’m hooked on Wally Lamb’s big baggy novels. His titles are odd and unmemorable (She’s Come Undone, I Know This Much Is True, We Are Water) but each has swept me away. The title of this one had me half-fearing it might be preachy, but not at all. The narrator, when he mentions religion at all, is agnostic. The story starts with the Columbine school massacre, witnessed by the narrator’s wife, moves from there into further troubling dramatic events both present and past. It’s not my favourite of Wally Lamb’s books, because the backstory, though interesting, is not as gripping as the foreground story it keeps interrupting, and I felt the lack of a family tree diagram. If you’re new to Lamb, I would start with one of the others.

Another masterpiece from a master storyteller. Thoroughly enjoyed it!