The Hour I First Believed

This is a novel I found very confusing--I'm not sure what the crux is supposed to be. The title suggests that the book is about the search for God, but I really didn't see much of that theme in the book until the very end.

The story is about a high school literature teacher. The beginning depicts the banality of his current and past marriages. The writing was quite entertaining as I found myself relating so much to the character's perception of couplehood. Then, the story moves on to tell a story of his wife, who survived the Columbine massacre, and her struggle to combat depression and PTSD and prescription drug addiction. As this theme unfolds, the main character's aunt passes away and he inherits the family farm and reflects on his family history, struggling to understand it all. Then his wife accidentally kills a boy by driving under the influence. She is sentenced to prison for five years, and, while the wife is in prison, the main character discovers many family secrets and that one of his ancestors was a pioneer in the women's suffrage movement as well as an end to racism.

Like I said, the story was all over the place. The beginning was very entertaining, but I just didn't understand the thesis, and got annoyed toward the end, skipping over large portions of the story.

I really enjoyed Wally Lamb's other novels: She's Come Undone and I Know This Much is True. I read them a long time ago and only remember snippets, but I believe I liked them enough to read both books twice.

How to be Good

This book starts off about a traditional marriage in which both parties have become complacent with each other. The male in the couple is extremely sarcastic--in a humorous and entirely British sort of way. The way that the couple feels about each other reflects the way that so many of my serious relationships have felt at the time. Contemptuous and boring.

But then the book changes entirely, when the husband meets a spiritual healer and changes his personality into being as good of a person as he can be. He gives away money, takes in homeless people, etc. The remainder of the book is about the wife's frustration with this change, and her debate of whether or not to stay or go.

The book goes nowhere from there. I was entertained by the first part of the book, but the rest of the book is pretty boring and there really isn't a conclusion.