I Know This Much is True…a book review…of sorts
This very lengthy (almost 900 page) tome has been sitting on my bookshelf for nearly 10 years. I loved Wally Lamb’s first novel, She’s Come Undone, but somehow, I never got around to cracking the daunting width of that formidable spine until I had some time on my hands as the holidays approached. Once I started, I could not put it down. The book lay in its place of honor at the kitchen table and when I couldn’t grab a few hours to sit down and eagerly devour the pages, at least I could sneak in a chapter or two while I ate breakfast or lunch.
I Know This Much is True follows Dominick Birdsey’s journey as he takes on the seemingly insurmountable burden caring for an identical twin brother who is plagued by paranoid schizophrenia. The book opens with Thomas Birdsey’s self-amputation of his own hand in an attempt to divert the attention of the world leaders from the impending “Desert Storm.” Thomas is convinced that he is the Lord’s “right hand man,” so to speak, and has been given a mission to bring world peace. His actions land him in a maximum-security forensic psychiatric facility called Hatch and his twin pushes everything in his life aside to try to get him released.
Lamb deftly steers the reader through the twists and turns of generations of the past. The story entwines the present setting of the 80s and 90s with the lives of the young Birdsey brothers: their timid, harelipped mother; their overbearing and abusive stepfather; the beginnings of Thomas’ illness; and Dominick’s trials and tribulations as he grows up being the “normal twin.” The third layer reveals itself in the memoirs of the Italian immigrant grandfather they had never met as Dominick uses a fine-toothed comb to seek out the answers that he has been searching for all his life. Who was his birth father? Why was he healthy when Thomas was ill? Why did he have to shoulder such heavy weight all of his life?
It is that last question that becomes the crux of the novel. Dominick Birdsey sees himself as a martyr. Someone who has either shelved or lost all that he holds dear. His life crumbles around him. His anger is palpable. In speaking with his therapist, he demonstrates his intense dislike of what he knows of his Grandfather through reading his memoirs. Describing him as “grandiose,” Dr. Patel asks him if perhaps the word, in any way, describes him. It is this pivotal moment when Dominick’s hard shell of bitterness begins to crack, “…earlier, you described yourself as fate’s test case. Likened your trials and tribulations to those of Job, who, of course, is legendary because of the way God tested his faith. So, I was just wondering….More tea?”
It seems I always find something of myself in every book that I read. In this case…well, let’s just say the truth hurts, doesn’t it? No one likes to realize that the burden they feel they have shouldered was actually one they set upon themselves. That they see themselves making huge sacrifices at the expense of their own lives for all of those around them. There seems to be no end to the giving and no beginning in the receiving. It is only with great reflection and much hard work that we realize, in the end, that we have actually been given great gifts along the way and have simply chosen to ignore them. Wally Lamb strikes that chord at the very center of your being and yanks you right into reality along with Dominick Birdsey. In confronting the pain of his past, he unlocks deep secrets within himself. Not just the answers he has long sought out, but answers to questions he never even knew he’d asked for.
Ten years was a long time to wait to read this book. Now I hear he has a new novel out and I won’t leave it sitting, dusty, upon my bookshelf…a treasure waiting to be revealed.
Eat, Pray, Love
When I first began reading Elizabeth Gilbert’s memoir, Eat, Pray, Love, I felt as though this woman must have been camping out inside my head for the last year and a half. Gilbert has, for the most part, a resoundingly familiar voice. Her wry, self-deprecating (and I realize that term has been fittingly overused in reviews of her work) style has a kind of “one size fits all” ring to it. I mean, who among us hasn’t, at least figuratively, found themselves prone on the bathroom floor at midnight realizing that they needed an intervention of the highest power?
Gilbert weaves an amazing story of a year-long search for pleasure and devotion, and, ultimately, a well-balanced mix of the two in a clever series of 108 short tales inspired by the 108 beads in the traditional Indian japa mala. As the devout would finger each bead one by one during prayerful meditation, so Gilbert fingers each tale, exploring the nuances as one might feel the intricately carved beads under one’s touch.
As a journalist for GQ, Elizabeth Gilbert lives the life that exists only in my parallel universe. She travels extensively and, as she freely admits, she does so in a completely haphazard and utterly unfettered way. Armed with nothing more than weather appropriate clothing and a round trip ticket, Gilbert embarks on her first post-divorce trip of self-discovery to Italy. Here is where she indulges in a full-on appreciation of the beautiful language and even better food. I salivated my way through Italy as though I were her companion during her four-month stay in Rome.
As a spiritual seeker, Gilbert initially won me over with her non-denominational approach to “God”. Again, I felt a kindred spirit when she explains, “why I used the word God, when I could just as easily use the words Jehovah, Allah, Shiva, Brahma, Vishnu, or Zeus. Alternatively, I could call God ‘That,’ which is how the ancient Sanskrit scriptures say it, and which I think comes close to the all-inclusive and unspeakable entity I have sometimes experienced.” Although this spoke to my soul, it was her brutally honest and forthright manner of prayer that really stole my heart, “What I said to God through my gasping sobs was something like this: ‘hello, God. How are you? I’m Liz. It’s nice to meet you….That’s right—I was speaking to the creator of the universe as though we’d just been introduced at a cocktail party.’”
From Italy, Gilbert moves on to India with the intent to spend a six week stay at an Ashram in order to facilitate her search for a personal relationship with her cocktail party companion. It was here that the author and I began to part ways and as she stumbled into long essays on the history of transcendental meditation I found myself avoiding the book altogether. Although open to Eastern ideas, I am firmly entrenched in a Quaker upbringing and initially balked at the idea that one could find Nirvana in a cave in India by emptying one’s mind. Clearly, I needed to open my own mind even further and accept that Gilbert truly experienced the divine intervention she had keened for on that cold bathroom floor a few years prior. I found that even in my reticence to slog through the heavier parts of her story, I was mirroring Gilbert’s own resistance to the path she herself had set before her.
The third and final part of Gilbert’s memoir lands her in Indonesia to sit at the side of an ancient (somewhere between 65 and 123 year old) medicine man. His off-handed and casual predictions begin with an unexpected friendship and an even more unexpected lover. As her life evolves from total chaos to one of balance, I found her tales of generosity and worthiness to be a bit too self-congratulatory and self-important, albeit probably well-deserved.
In the end, Gilbert walks that fine line between pure pleasure and spiritual gratification that is such a rare commodity these days. Her lack of responsibility (children, 9-5 job, etc.), coupled with freedom and monetary means allowed the author a physical journey that spanned the length of one year but gained her a lifetime of knowledge. In our own lives, we can set ourselves upon that same path, weaving our quest throughout the entanglement of our day-to-day lives. In the meantime, read Eat, Pray, Love and live vicariously through Gilbert’s amazing slice of life.
