When Self-Loathing is Your Cellmate: The River Is Waiting by Wally Lamb

Corby Ledbetter’s prison cell may be real, but the one in which he resides inside his head is infinitely worse.

Convinced by a good friend that texted me several times she was wrecked by this book, I moved my copy of Wally Lamb’s “The River Is Waiting” off my TBR list and spent a large chunk of the weekend with my nose in Corby’s business.

I am left with this question — have we ever seen Wally Lamb and Jodi Picoult in the same room together? Because not for nothing, but I think they may be the same person.

All kidding aside, Lamb, like Picoult, has mastered what I like to call the “Angst” genre — a story that’s so captivating the reader will likely binge read it and almost always without fail will also make readers want to throw the book across the room in grief.

It’s not a spoiler to allude to the protagonist’s trip to prison in this blog’s title. I figure anything mentioned on the inside dustjacket is fair game. And to anyone thinking about reading it, let me just give you a trigger warning up front — the reason Corby goes to prison is likely one of the worst, if not THE worst reason you could ever be sent up river. You may also guess it less than a page in. It’s brutal.

And Corby doesn’t need the four walls of his prison cell to be punished — he’s doing just fine doing that to himself. Where this story goes, however, is in some ways pretty uplifting and profound. (Only to be undone by the moment you want to throw the book across the room. But don’t. You need and deserve the ending Lamb delivers.)

Corby’s time behind bars allows for a lot of soul searching and self-improvement, during which he taps into a part of his soul that increasingly wants to be in service of others, even if it feels like a suit that doesn’t quite fit at first. Between Manny, Solomon and a handful of prison staffers, Corby discovers he has so much more to offer of himself than he ever thought.

“The River is Waiting” is one of the more engaging novels I have read in a while and I can imagine would make a great book club pick if the theme is Crime and Capital Punishment. Lamb has always been and remains an extraordinary writer. Well done.