How did Oprah's selection change the author's life?

All his life, Dominick Birdsey has fought for both separation and wholeness. For years, at home, he protected his timid brother from their stepfather's reign of terror; and later, as an adult, he inherited the role of his twin's keeper as he was thrown deeper and deeper into Thomas's private world of schizophrenic delusions. "I never claimed I was lovable," Dominick admits in the wake of his twin's public "sacrifice," the opening act that begins Lamb's far-reaching and powerful second novel. Dominick's entire life has been compromised by a crippling identity crises: "My old fear: that I was as weak as Thomas. That one day I'd look in the mirror and see a crazy man." Wally Lamb has constructed a world worthy of these complex lives, an addictive, page-turning drama, one of the most talked-about novels of 1998.

"I Know This Much is True never grapples with anything less than life's biggest questions....a modern-day Dostoyevsky with a pop sensibility."

"Every now and then a book comes along that sets new standards for writers and readers alike. Wally Lamb's latest novel is stunning - and even that might be an understatement.... This is a masterpiece."

"A probable commercial bonanza, but both twice as long and not as much as it should have been."

"Within Wally Lamb's second book...there's a fine novel shouting to get out.... It's a novel of too little style and too much substance. ....Perhaps sweeping male anger is less fresh than its female equivalent. Or perhaps this 912-page tome simply needed an editor bold enough to persuade a talented novelist whose first book sold 3 million copies (thanks in large part to Oprah Winfrey's benediction) to trim the fat from the meat of its melodrama."

With his stunning debut novel, She's Come Undone, Wally Lamb won the adulation of critics and readers with his mesmerizing tale of one woman's painful yet triumphant journey of self-discovery. Now, this brilliantly talented writer returns with I Know This Much is True, a heartbreaking and poignant multigenerational saga of the reproductive bonds of destruction and the powerful force of forgiveness. A masterpiece that breathtakingly tells a story of alienation and connection, power and abuse, devastation and renewal--this novel is a contemporary retelling of an ancient Hindu myth. A proud king must confront his demons to achieve salvation. Change yourself, the myth instructs, and you will inhabit a renovated world.