I Know This Much Is True: A Novel

Wally Lamb

Mar 2009 · Harper Collins

About this ebook

#1 New York Times Bestseller and Oprah Book Club selection

"Thoughtful . . . heart-wrenching . . . . An exercise in soul-baring storytelling—with the soul belonging to 20th-century America itself. It's hard to read and to stop reading, and impossible to forget."  — USA Today

Dominick Birdsey, a forty-year-old housepainter living in Three Rivers, Connecticut, finds his subdued life greatly disturbed when his identical twin brother Thomas, a paranoid schizophrenic, commits a shocking act of self-mutilation. Dominick is forced to care for his brother as well as confront dark secrets and pain he has buried deep within himself—a journey of the soul that takes him beyond his blue-collar New England town to Sicily’s Mount Etna, the birthplace of his grandfather and namesake. Coming to terms with his life and lineage, Dominick struggles to find forgiveness and finally rebuild himself beyond the haunted shadow of his troubled twin.

I Know This Much Is True is a masterfully told story of alienation and connection, power and abuse, devastation and renewal—an unforgettable masterpiece.   

Ratings and reviews

I enjoyed She's Come Undone in its mad rambling way. It was almost as though Lamb didn't expect to be taken seriously. In this one, he tries to get serious, and it falls flat.

The story seems to run out of steam about three quarters of the way through. Lamb ties himself in knots trying to resolve everyone's issues but its still an enjoyable read about some very dysfunctional people

One of my favorite books. Lamb has the ability to make you want to become fully vested in his characters. It is a thick tome, but so hard to put down, the book is over before you want to part with it. I've read it twice and have given as a gift to my friends and family who are avid readers - it is fun introducing a new (to them), talented writer to people!

About the author

Wally Lamb is the author of five New York Times bestselling novels: She’s Come Undone, I Know This Much Is True, The Hour I First Believed, Wishin’ and Hopin’, and We Are Water. His first two works of fiction, She’s Come Undone and I Know This Much Is True, were both #1 New York Times bestsellers and selections of Oprah’s Book Club. Lamb edited Couldn’t Keep It to Myself, I’ll Fly Away, and You Don’t Know Me, three volumes of essays from students in his writing workshop at York Correctional Institution, a women’s prison in Connecticut, where he has been a volunteer facilitator for two decades. He lives in Connecticut and New York.