Wally Lamb is the author of six New York Times bestselling novels: I’ll Take You There, We Are Water, Wishin’ and Hopin’, The Hour I First Believed, I Know This Much Is True, and She’s Come Undone. His latest novel, The River is Waiting, will be released in May of 2025 through Marysue Rucci Books, an imprint of Simon & Schuster. Lamb also edited Couldn’t Keep It to Myself and I’ll Fly Away, two volumes of essays from students in his writing workshop at York Correctional Institution, a women’s prison in Connecticut, where he was a volunteer facilitator for twenty years. Lamb lives in Connecticut with his wife, Christine, and they have three sons.
I read this book way back when it first came out and before I ever started rating books with stars. I don’t feel right rating it now because this version is not going to get the same rating as the print version. The audiobook is abridged and I feel like even though it stayed true to the core of the novel, there were just too many details cut out. This is an excellent book that really gives the reader a very intimate look into mental health and what it is like as a family member of someone diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia during a time when it was treated almost inhumanely. I wanted the audiobook version because I wanted these characters to come to life for me. And while they did, I just wanted more of the details that the book gives you. I feel like it would have given me a deeper connection. It is sort of like when they cut important elements of a book from the movie version. It’s why for the most part, as a reader, the book is always better than the movie. Regardless, this book should be a classic and it should be on everyone’s TBR if they haven’t already read it. My suggestion is that if you have never read it, don’t start with the audiobook. Settle in with the 897 printed pages. You won’t be disappointed.
Didn’t realize until the end of the year that I had read the abridged version, which is VERY abridged. This probably accounts for why I only gave it three stars.