When I started reading Wally Lamb's latest novel, I really didn't know what it was about. Well, it's about the Columbine shootings in Colorado in 1999. Lamb plops a character, Caelum Quirk, into the fray as an English teacher at Columbine High School, and his character's wife, Maureen, is a part-time school nurse there, to boot.
The facts of the Columbine killings are dead on. I know, I was living in Denver at the time, and every time one of the victims' names is mentioned in the book, I can picture the double-page spread and the pictures the Denver Post published to memorialize them.
Bottom line, it's creepy reading. Lamb is a really good writer, and he makes a believable case for this Quirk guy to have been there. He provides an inside look at a day that only a handful of people really experienced firsthand.
I finished Part One, Butterfly, last night. I'll start reading Part Two, Mantis, tonight. I'll finish the book, but I'll be glad when I'm finished.
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