I Know This Much Is True

By: Wally Lamb

Narrated by: Ken Howard

Length: 5 hrs and 42 mins

Publisher's summary

Identical twins Dominick and Thomas Birdsey were born in the waning moments of 1949 and the opening minutes of 1950. Now at 40, Dominick's entire life has been compromised and constricted by anger and fear, by the paranoid schizophrenic twin brother he both loves and resents, and by the past they shared with their adoptive father, Ray, a spit-and polish ex-Navy man, and their long-suffering mother, Concettina. The brothers' relationship undergoes the ultimate test when Thomas commits an unthinkable act that threatens the tenuous balance of both his and Dominick's lives. Wally Lamb's long awaited follow-up to the critically acclaimed novel She's Come Undone is narrated by Tony Award-winning actor Ken Howard.

(P) and ©1998 HarperCollins Publishers Inc., All Rights Reserved, Harper Audio, A Division of HarperCollins Publishers

Critic reviews

Publishers Weekly Listen Up Award: Best Audio of 1998, Fiction

"This award-winning Broadway stalwart here shows himself to be as adept behind the mike as behind the footlights." (AudioFile)

Family Drama

If you love family drama this is the book for you. Unfortunately the recording has many flaws. The narrator does well but sounds muffled. You can hear other people speaking in the background.

Great story. Awful performance.

The narrator of the audio story is difficult to listen to and takes away from the story. There is random music that suddenly appears at strange times and the volume is mismatched and frowns out the narrator. The recorded volume also goes in and out and I was constantly adjusting to compensate for it.

The story is very good once you get passed the quality of the performance. I almost stopped listening to it and requested a refund, I’m glad I didn’t but I would only recommend actually READING a physical book for this title.

I love Wally Lamb!

The first book I read by this author was She's Come Undone. This man seriously cannot write a bad book. It was a great listen!

Poor Audio Quality

I listen to a lot of audiobooks on Audible and every now and then I can hear background noise or voices but I could hear a man’s voice talking in the background throughout almost all of this recording. It was distracting from the listening experience.

Audible cheated

I’ve read this book and absolutely loved the story!! However the audio version is cut in half and I am disappointed and cheated of a credit

Did not expect a condensed version

I thought I was receiving the entire book. Sadly it had been edited down to eight chapters so I feel much of the story was missing-not very pleased.

Great book

The only negative feedback is you can hear voices of what sounds like another audible recording in the background. A little distracting. Other than that, this is a great story and narrator.

Great story but poor production

You can hear someone talking in the background through most of the story... The musical"segways" are awful and poorly placed. That being said the narrator was very good. The book itself was spectacular. Worth getting.

Amazing story! Horrible recording.

This is an amazing story that I could relate to so much as a twin who has a twin with mental health struggles. I just hate that the recording quality was not that great.

Gritty and Real

Wally's description of the mental illness schizophrenia and how it was handled in the 70's, 80's and 90's is very true to life. He also encapsulated the effect it has on the family and the twin-sibling eerily close to reality.

Dominique's first-person narrative is gripping and kept me captured all the time.