Reading List

Authors Like Wally Lamb

Q: What should I read after I Know This Much Is True?

Ann Patchett's The Dutch House (2019) for siblings shaped by their childhood, or Richard Russo's Empire Falls (2001) for a small mill town and its families. Lamb's own The Hour I First Believed (2008) is his next big novel.

Q: Does Wally Lamb have a new book?

His most recent novel is The River Is Waiting (2025), his first in nine years and his third Oprah's Book Club pick. It follows Corby Ledbetter, a father sent to prison after a fatal accident in his own driveway.

Q: Which Wally Lamb book should I read first?

She's Come Undone (1992) is his debut and the most popular starting point. I Know This Much Is True (1998) is longer and was adapted by HBO in 2020, with Mark Ruffalo playing both twins.

Wally Lamb taught English for twenty-five years at Norwich Free Academy in Connecticut, the school he had attended himself. His first novel, She's Come Undone (1992), is narrated by Dolores Price, a girl from Rhode Island who survives rape, her mother's death and seven years in a psychiatric hospital. Oprah Winfrey chose it for her book club, and then chose I Know This Much Is True (1998), which opens with Thomas Birdsey, a twin with paranoid schizophrenia, cutting off his own hand in a public library. From 1999 to 2019 Lamb ran a writing workshop at York Correctional Institution, Connecticut's only prison for women, and edited two books of the women's writing. In 2025 The River Is Waiting, about a father sent to prison after a fatal accident, became his third Oprah pick. The ten writers below share his territory: families, damage, and the slow work of forgiveness.

By Lisanne Swart · 10 authors · Family saga · Trauma and redemption · Updated October 2026

Quick answer

If you like Wally Lamb, start with John Irving, whose long New England novels mix comedy and catastrophe the same way. For a family in a declining mill town, read Richard Russo's Empire Falls; for siblings bound together by their childhood, read Ann Patchett's The Dutch House. Further down are a Glasgow novel about a mother's drinking, and one book that refuses Lamb's belief in healing.

10 authors like Wally Lamb

Before Lamb: the long life story

Charles Dickens

British · David Copperfield (1850), Great Expectations (1861)

Dickens was born in Portsmouth in 1812 and was sent to work in a blacking factory at twelve while his father was in a debtors' prison. His long, crowded novels follow orphans and outsiders from childhood into adult life, and were read by a mass audience in monthly parts. He died in 1870.

Lamb's big novels work on the Dickens model: a first-person life told from childhood, a large cast, and a long road towards forgiveness. Readers who loved Dolores Price's voice will recognise David Copperfield's.

— Lisanne

Every book by Charles Dickens →

Comedy and catastrophe

John Irving

American · The World According to Garp (1978), The Cider House Rules (1985), A Prayer for Owen Meany (1989)

Irving was born in Exeter, New Hampshire, in 1942. His novels follow characters from childhood through violence, accident and grief, mostly in small New England towns, and return to the same subjects: wrestling, orphans and absent fathers. He won an Academy Award in 2000 for the screenplay of The Cider House Rules.

Irving is the closest American match for Lamb's scale and setting: long New England novels in which comedy and catastrophe sit side by side. A Prayer for Owen Meany, with its questions of faith, pairs well with The Hour I First Believed.

— Lisanne

Every book by John Irving →

The family next door, examined

Anne Tyler

American · Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant (1982), Breathing Lessons (1988), A Spool of Blue Thread (2015)

Tyler was born in Minneapolis in 1941 and has set most of her novels in Baltimore. They follow ordinary families over decades, often through one marriage or one set of siblings. Breathing Lessons won the Pulitzer Prize in 1989.

Tyler shares Lamb's patience with damaged families and his refusal to make anyone a simple villain. She is quieter and shorter, and suits readers who want the family without the melodrama.

— Lisanne

Every book by Anne Tyler →

The mill town, with humour

Richard Russo

American · Nobody's Fool (1993), Empire Falls (2001)

Russo was born in Johnstown, New York, in 1949 and grew up in nearby Gloversville, a declining tannery town. His novels are set in small mill towns in upstate New York and Maine, among people who stayed where they grew up. Empire Falls won the Pulitzer Prize in 2002.

Russo's towns are cousins of Lamb's Three Rivers: a closed mill, a few families who know each other's history, and a man trying to make peace with his past. Both writers are funnier than their subjects suggest.

— Lisanne

Every book by Richard Russo →

Small-town New England, briefer

Elizabeth Strout

American · Olive Kitteridge (2008), My Name Is Lucy Barton (2016)

Strout was born in Portland, Maine, in 1956. Olive Kitteridge, linked stories about a retired schoolteacher in the fictional coastal town of Crosby, won the Pulitzer Prize in 2009. My Name Is Lucy Barton is narrated by a writer remembering a childhood of poverty during her mother's visit to her hospital bed.

Strout shares Lamb's interest in small-town New England and in people who were hurt as children. She writes far more briefly, and suits readers who want Lamb's sympathy in fewer pages.

— Lisanne

Every book by Elizabeth Strout →

Siblings and the long view

Ann Patchett

American · Bel Canto (2001), Commonwealth (2016), The Dutch House (2019)

Patchett was born in Los Angeles in 1963 and lives in Nashville, where she co-owns the bookshop Parnassus Books. The Dutch House follows a brother and sister over five decades after their stepmother turns them out of the family home. Bel Canto won the Orange Prize, now the Women's Prize for Fiction, in 2002.

Patchett, like Lamb, writes about siblings held together by what happened to them as children. The Dutch House suits readers who were moved by the brothers of I Know This Much Is True.

— Lisanne

Every book by Ann Patchett →

Addiction seen by a child

Douglas Stuart

Scottish-American · Shuggie Bain (2020), Young Mungo (2022)

Stuart was born in Glasgow in 1976 and moved to New York, where he worked in fashion design before publishing fiction. Shuggie Bain, about a boy growing up in 1980s Glasgow with a mother who drinks, won the Booker Prize in 2020 and draws on his own childhood.

Stuart writes the kind of novel Lamb writes: a child's long view of a parent's illness, told with tenderness for everyone in it. It moves the story from New England to Thatcher-era Scotland.

— Lisanne

Every book by Douglas Stuart →

Hardship, and holding on

Rohinton Mistry

Indian-Canadian · Such a Long Journey (1991), A Fine Balance (1995)

Mistry was born in Bombay in 1952 and emigrated to Canada in 1975. A Fine Balance follows four strangers who end up sharing a small flat in an Indian city during the Emergency of 1975–77. It won the Giller Prize and was later an Oprah's Book Club pick.

Mistry and Lamb share a reader in Oprah's Book Club and a commitment to long novels of suffering and kindness. A Fine Balance takes that kind of story to India, with fewer consolations at the end.

— Lisanne

Every book by Rohinton Mistry →

Damage without repair

Hanya Yanagihara

American · A Little Life (2015), To Paradise (2022)

Yanagihara was born in Los Angeles in 1974 and was editor-in-chief of T: The New York Times Style Magazine. A Little Life follows four friends in New York over three decades and centres on one of them, Jude, whose childhood abuse shapes his adult life. It was shortlisted for the Booker Prize.

Yanagihara takes up Lamb's subject, the long aftermath of childhood harm, and refuses his answer. Where Lamb's novels move towards healing, A Little Life asks whether some damage can be repaired at all; it suits readers ready for a much darker book.

— Lisanne

Every book by Hanya Yanagihara →

The family and the moral question

Jodi Picoult

American · My Sister's Keeper (2004), Nineteen Minutes (2007)

Picoult was born on Long Island in 1966 and lives in New Hampshire. Her novels build a family story around a moral or legal question; Nineteen Minutes is about a school shooting in a small New Hampshire town and what it does to the families there.

Picoult shares many of Lamb's readers and some of his subjects: Nineteen Minutes and The Hour I First Believed both follow a community after a school shooting. She is more plot-driven and suits readers who want the moral question argued out.

— Lisanne

Every book by Jodi Picoult →

Where to start if you loved Wally Lamb

If you want the same scale, read John Irving.

A Prayer for Owen Meany: friendship, faith and a fatal accident in a New Hampshire town.

If you want the mill town, read Richard Russo.

Empire Falls: a diner, a closed factory and a man who never left.

If you want siblings, read Ann Patchett.

The Dutch House: a brother and sister, a lost home, and five decades.

If you want addiction seen by a child, read Douglas Stuart.

Shuggie Bain: a boy and his mother in 1980s Glasgow.

If you have read his first two novels, try The River Is Waiting (2025).

His novel about a father in prison after a fatal accident, written after twenty years of teaching writing in a women's prison.

Frequently asked questions about authors like Wally Lamb

Who writes like Wally Lamb?

John Irving, Richard Russo and Anne Tyler write long, humane family novels in a similar vein. Ann Patchett, Elizabeth Strout and Jodi Picoult share many of his readers.

What should I read after I Know This Much Is True?

Ann Patchett's The Dutch House (2019) for siblings shaped by their childhood, or Richard Russo's Empire Falls (2001) for a small mill town and its families. Lamb's own The Hour I First Believed (2008) is his next big novel.

Is Wally Lamb like John Irving?

Both write long novels set in New England that mix comedy with violence and grief. Irving's plots are more eccentric; Lamb stays closer to psychology and family.

Does Wally Lamb have a new book?

His most recent novel is The River Is Waiting (2025), his first in nine years and his third Oprah's Book Club pick. It follows Corby Ledbetter, a father sent to prison after a fatal accident in his own driveway.

Which Wally Lamb book should I read first?

She's Come Undone (1992) is his debut and the most popular starting point. I Know This Much Is True (1998) is longer and was adapted by HBO in 2020, with Mark Ruffalo playing both twins.

What is The Hour I First Believed about?

It follows Caelum Quirk, a teacher at Columbine High School, and his wife Maureen, who survives the 1999 shooting there, through its aftermath and their move back to Connecticut.

Sources

List last reviewed 31 October 2026.

Written by Lisanne Swart, who has curated reading lists and author guides at lisanneswart.com since 2021. Every comparison here is a judgement about method and subject, not an algorithmic match. See more on her personal bookshelf.

Authors Like Wally Lamb

10 authors like Wally Lamb

Charles Dickens

John Irving

Anne Tyler

Richard Russo

Elizabeth Strout

Ann Patchett

Douglas Stuart

Rohinton Mistry

Hanya Yanagihara

Jodi Picoult

Where to start if you loved Wally Lamb

Frequently asked questions about authors like Wally Lamb

Who writes like Wally Lamb?

What should I read after I Know This Much Is True?

Is Wally Lamb like John Irving?

Does Wally Lamb have a new book?

Which Wally Lamb book should I read first?

What is The Hour I First Believed about?

Hi, there.

Home

About

My Bookshelf

Weekly’s

Stay tuned: sign up for the newsletter!