![]() Verna’s story makes up the bitter, believable, and well-told last third of the book, raising the question why Lamb didn’t chuck the ghost and movie shtick, along with Felix’s corny narration, to simply write about three generations of the Funicello family. With his stunning debut novel, Shes Come Undone, Wally Lamb won the adulation of critics and readers with his mesmerizing tale of one womans painful yet. After giving birth to Frances, alone and prematurely in a hotel bathroom, she died. Frances’s birth mother, Verna, was 17 years old and married to a man in the Merchant Marines who was oversees when she became pregnant by Felix’s uncle. Bad people do sometimes thrive and get away with terrible transgressions.” However, nearly 200 pages in, Felix watches the “movie” of the story of his sister Frances, who was adopted in the early 1950s, a few years before Felix was born. With both humans and the supernatural, Felix’s relationships feel forced, awkward, and unlikely, in no small part because of his trite, preachy wisdom: “Bad things can happen to good people. Behind every good man is a great woman - or three A New York Times bestseller: the kaleidoscopic new novel from Wally Lamb, author of Shes Come Undone. When he’s not hanging out with ghosts, Felix is the encouraging father of Aliza, his adult daughter trying to make a name for herself as a journalist in present-day New York City. He grew up in Norwich, Connecticut, which (along with surrounding towns) is where he bases the. While it’s clear that Lamb ( We Are Water) intended this framework as a kind of celebration or heralding of unsung women, the setup feels not like illuminating magical realism but simply like far too much of a stretch. The ghosts in charge are women who were silent film–era heroines, including Lois Weber, an actress and eventual powerhouse director. The “movies” they show Felix are of his own childhood, which he not only watches but also literally reenters, experiencing a kind of dual awareness of the present and his memories of the past, primarily the fights between his two older sisters. At the empty theater in New York City where he normally shows classic movies to his film group, two ghosts show up instead, with reels of their own. Wally Lamb is the author of six novels, including I Know This Much Is True, a No. ![]() Not long after film scholar Felix Funicello turns 60, a very strange thing starts happening.
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