About two months ago, in a meeting of the Literary Group, I held out my opinion that tellers of stories wrote best when they had lived the life they were writing about. I cited Sinclair Lewis as the prime example. It is a firm belief I have held for long and I examine every new author I read to see if he or she fulfilled that criterion.
Between the hours of two and four-thirty this quiet winter morning in Philadelphia, I have finished the last few pages of "I Know This Much is True" and find myself hoping that for the sake of his sanity, Wally Lamb had not lived the life of either of the Birdsey twins. What a magnificent story and what a lovely style Lamb has told it! It is difficult to accept that it is only the second book he has written.
I wish I could contact Lamb - I so want to ask him if he cried while writing the book as I wept many times while reading the book, particularly that last line of it where he tells me, the compulsive forgiver, where love grows - I, the man who has for long believed he has seen the toughest that God can handout to any of His creations.
How can a man write a family story with such sensitivity in these days when spying and terrorism have taken over the literary world ?