Connecticut author Wally Lamb didn’t just burst onto the literary scene in 1997, he stormed onto it when his first novel, She’s Come Undone, was selected into the prestigious Oprah’s Book Club. Millions became Lamb devotees, drawn to his remarkable storytelling in 1998, when his second novel, I Know This Much is True, also was selected with this endorsement from one of the world’s most influential women: “It’s not just a book, it’s a life experience.”
Lamb continued teaching as an associate professor of creative writing at UConn and as a volunteer in the writing workshop program at York Correctional Institute for Women in Niantic, where he edited two volumes of his students’ stories. On the writing front, Lamb resisted the temptation to crank out a manuscript and stamp his famous name on it, instead taking nine years to craft The Hour I First Believed.
In the latest novel, middle-aged teacher Caelum Quirk is working on his third marriage when his wife, Maureen, survives the Columbine High School massacre. Seeking peace and healing, Caelum brings his wife back to his Connecticut hometown and embarks on a journey of discovery into his family’s past to salvage his faith in the future.
In an exclusive Times interview, Lamb discusses his latest novel.
It’s been 10 years since the publication of your last book. How did the success of your first two novels change your life and shape your writing process?
It was an exciting rollercoaster, for sure. But at the end of the ride, I sat down to a blank page—an empty computer screen. In a way I had to get over the “bestseller-dom” and get everyone else’s expectations and all of the readers out of the room so I could be alone with my writing.
A mentor told me a long time ago to let go of writing for an audience, to write for yourself, and the audience that needs to find it, will find it. I really had to get back to basics.
In the forward to “The Hour I First Believed,” you write about your son bringing home a praying mantis’s egg. This insect makes frequent reappearances in the novel at defining moments in Caelum’s life. What does the praying mantis symbolize?
For me, the praying mantis was a symbol of hope. Take a look at the cover—there’s a candle that’s burning upright on one end and it’s also lit at the other end in an illogical way. The novel is divided into two parts. The first part, “Butterfly,” is an investigation of chaos and the ways that sudden events can send our lives reeling in a direction that we never planned for. It’s the stuff in life that doesn’t make sense and that can be very scary.
The second part is called “Mantis,” and it’s an investigation of how and why. The idea that there’s an organizing principle after all, whether it’s God or a supreme justice, that’s making things right. That hope always balances despair.
When Caelum returns to his childhood home for his aunt’s funeral, he says, “The place was radioactive with memories.” How do the character’s memories shape their future and create who they are?
This was partly influenced by the work I was doing at York women’s prison in Niantic. At the time I began writing this novel, I had just begun volunteering with the writing workshop program and those two experiences feed into one another.
Many women in that program had traumatic childhoods and had been imprisoned by their family’s secrets. As they began to write, their stories came out and they shared them—not just on paper but with the group. They were dispelling these toxic memories and you could see them get at truths of their life and the lives of the family members that came before them.
Later, Caelum says, “Like it or not, this place was mine—the history and the burden of it.” Caelum discovers more about his family history in this place than he wanted. What’s so powerful about family history?
I became interested in genealogy and traced the Lamb family name back to the 1600s when they first arrived in America from England. It was very exciting but also bittersweet, as my father had died and he would have loved to have known more about his family.
All this happened in tandem with me discovering Caelum’s story, and it shaped the realization that we never really know or understand the extent to which our family history and those who lived before us steer the course of our own lives. Whether it’s the DNA we inherit or the cultural priorities that we pass down through generations, we almost never know how it impacts our lives.
In the novel, I use the metaphor that we put our elders in the ground and [doing] so forms an underground stream that affects us, always whispering to us. We can’t see it but it’s there.
A powerful piece of the novel is the Columbine High School tragedy. Why did you choose to depict the real-life tragedy at Columbine rather than create a similar fictionalized event and what was that experience like?
I felt it was necessary right from the start. It was certainly a risk to deal with the actual events rather than create a Columbine-like scenario, but I felt it was important for a couple of reasons.
When I started with the idea of a school shooting as subject matter, I Googled Columbine and found a sea of information came up, the most disturbing of which were the videotapes that gunmen Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold left behind where they are laughing about their plans, mocking those around them as too stupid to follow the clues they were leaving—there they were hiding in plain sight.
As a teacher and a father, those images got into my head in a very disturbing way. I wanted to take them on—not in a combative way, but to try and understand where they were at that time.
I also wanted to honor the actual victims—those who died—and also the survivors and the collateral victims and their families. To acknowledge those who continue to live through this tragedy.
I was conscious of interfacing fiction and non-fiction in the book and wanted it to be respectful and not add to their pain. Two nights ago, I was on the book tour in Denver and there were big crowds at the events in the Columbine area. I was nervous to see people’s reactions and was very validated by those who thanked me for keeping their story in front of everyone. There are lessons to be learned from Columbine that should never be forgotten.
Chaos theory is a recurring presence in Caelum’s mind. Did you start with the idea or did the character and his experiences lend itself to the theory?
That day, Klebold and Harris caused chaos at Columbine High School. Very early in the writing process, I Googled chaos theory and, though much of the research I found was over my head, I became very interested in the domino or ripple effect. I thought about the classic example–that a butterfly flapping its wings in Brazil can cause a tornado on the other side of the world.
I began applying the idea to the characters and events in the novel. 9-11 isn’t featured much in the novel but it’s always in the shadow. These men made a plan to run those planes into these buildings and triggered a time of profound change in the world.
In The Hour I First Believed, the reader returns to Three Rivers, home of the Birdsey twins in I Know This Much is True. What motivated you to include past characters and is this part of bigger literary plan?
(Laugh) Ah, nothing I write is planned too carefully. I bought back some past characters for three reasons: one, it was fun to catch up with them; two, I thought it would be fun for my readers who’ve said many generous things about what these characters have meant to them. It was a wave “hello” to the readers. And finally, the novel is set in a small eastern Connecticut town and it’s natural that these characters would run into each other, that their lives would intersect.
What are you working on now?
I’m officially in a recovery period, but my radar is up and I’m beginning to do a little research. While I’m on tour and relentlessly traveling from city to city, it doesn’t lend itself to writing, but I’ve got ideas and questions that I’m investigating.
I’m eager and a little scared to get into another story. After nine years, I’m back at the starting gate. My new characters and I will be strangers for a while but I look forward to getting to know them.
By Susan Talpey
Special to the Times