THE HOUR I FIRST BELIEVED (Wally Lamb) - January 14/09

Alternately maddening and entertaining, The Hour I First Believed is ridiculously overlong and undeniably self-indulgent - as Lamb starts out with a compelling story about the Columbine shootings and transforms it into a dull tale about a man attempting to unravel his mysterious heritage. The author packs the book with long, extraordinarily pointless segments (ie diary entries from a forebearer, excerpts from a scholarly work revolving around his family, etc) that ensure that the book often feels more like work than recreation (and my eyes were seriously glazing over some of this stuff). The characters are incredibly vivid (ie Caelum, Velvet, Maureen, Alphonse, etc), however, and the ending nicely wraps up the various stories. But still, there's just no denying that this book should've been half its length. **1/2 out of ****