She's Come Undone
From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of three Oprah Book Club Picks including The River Is Waiting—Wally Lamb takes us on an extraordinary journey of love, pain, and renewal with the most heartbreakingly comical heroine to come along in years.
“Mine is a story of craving: an unreliable account of lusts and troubles that began, somehow, in 1956 on the day our free television was delivered....”
Meet Dolores Price. She’s thirteen, wise-mouthed but wounded, having bid her childhood goodbye. Beached like a whale in front of her bedroom TV, she spends the next few years nourishing herself with the Mallomars, potato chips, and Pepsi her anxious mother supplies. When she finally rolls into young womanhood at 257 pounds, Dolores is no stronger and life is no kinder. But this time she’s determined to rise to the occasion and give herself one more chance before really going belly up.
In this extraordinary coming-of-age odyssey, Wally Lamb invites us to hitch a wild ride on a journey of love, pain, and renewal with the most heartbreakingly comical heroine to come along in years. At once a fragile girl and a hard-edged cynic, so tough to love yet so inimitably lovable, Dolores is as poignantly real as our own imperfections. She’s Come Undone includes a promise: you will never forget Dolores Price.
“Mine is a story of craving: an unreliable account of lusts and troubles that began, somehow, in 1956 on the day our free television was delivered....”
Meet Dolores Price. She’s thirteen, wise-mouthed but wounded, having bid her childhood goodbye. Beached like a whale in front of her bedroom TV, she spends the next few years nourishing herself with the Mallomars, potato chips, and Pepsi her anxious mother supplies. When she finally rolls into young womanhood at 257 pounds, Dolores is no stronger and life is no kinder. But this time she’s determined to rise to the occasion and give herself one more chance before really going belly up.
In this extraordinary coming-of-age odyssey, Wally Lamb invites us to hitch a wild ride on a journey of love, pain, and renewal with the most heartbreakingly comical heroine to come along in years. At once a fragile girl and a hard-edged cynic, so tough to love yet so inimitably lovable, Dolores is as poignantly real as our own imperfections. She’s Come Undone includes a promise: you will never forget Dolores Price.
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Readers say *She's Come Undone* is a deeply human novel with a raw, complex protagonist whose journey is both heartbreaking and relatable. Reviewers a...
I suffered through the first half...or the first three-quarters...but in the end, I guess I have to admit it was worth it. I just wish I knew there was a happier ending to Dolores's story than that she saw a whale!
4.5 stars
Wow! What a heart-wrenching ending.
This was more than just a coming-of-age story. It was a life story. It was the joys the tragedies and the growth over a lifetime of hardships and learning about what life has to give and take.
When I first started reading I thought I was really going to like the book, then there was what felt like a change in the character and in the relationships from what I expected and where it felt like it was heading... things slowed down a bit and I wasn't so sure that I liked the book as much as I initially thought. I grew to dislike the personality of the protagonist. I didn't care for the way she treated others, the way she didn't seem to have any empathy whatsoever; she became unlikeable in her weakness for her vices. But as I came to know her a little more each day and saw that for her, life experiences shaped her in a different way from the path she saw for herself as well; each of our life experiences creates in us a being that only we know. Not that we understand it, but that it shapes us for good, bad, or indifferent in ways that we only see in hindsight.
However, shortly after that, despite disagreeing with some of the main character's life choices the book started hitting closer to home for me as time progressed and the author interwove familiar songs and themes from the evolving time period, which as it wore on and overlapped my own knowledge and became my own history. I feel like this story is closer to home for those over 40 than it is for the younger population which might explain the vast difference in ratings of the book. I don't believe in spoilers so I'm not going in specifics, but we watch this character grow up and go through several tragedies during her lifetime leading her down a similar path that she questioned of her own mother and she finally comes to see the so many parallels that life has to offer. Not only is life what we make it, but life makes us what we are....
Wow! What a heart-wrenching ending.
This was more than just a coming-of-age story. It was a life story. It was the joys the tragedies and the growth over a lifetime of hardships and learning about what life has to give and take.
When I first started reading I thought I was really going to like the book, then there was what felt like a change in the character and in the relationships from what I expected and where it felt like it was heading... things slowed down a bit and I wasn't so sure that I liked the book as much as I initially thought. I grew to dislike the personality of the protagonist. I didn't care for the way she treated others, the way she didn't seem to have any empathy whatsoever; she became unlikeable in her weakness for her vices. But as I came to know her a little more each day and saw that for her, life experiences shaped her in a different way from the path she saw for herself as well; each of our life experiences creates in us a being that only we know. Not that we understand it, but that it shapes us for good, bad, or indifferent in ways that we only see in hindsight.
However, shortly after that, despite disagreeing with some of the main character's life choices the book started hitting closer to home for me as time progressed and the author interwove familiar songs and themes from the evolving time period, which as it wore on and overlapped my own knowledge and became my own history. I feel like this story is closer to home for those over 40 than it is for the younger population which might explain the vast difference in ratings of the book. I don't believe in spoilers so I'm not going in specifics, but we watch this character grow up and go through several tragedies during her lifetime leading her down a similar path that she questioned of her own mother and she finally comes to see the so many parallels that life has to offer. Not only is life what we make it, but life makes us what we are....
She’s Come Undone is the most human book I’ve ever read.
Dolores is messy, difficult, vulnerable, funny, frustrating, and painfully real. Watching her break apart and slowly rebuild herself felt less like reading and more like witnessing someone survive.
I didn’t just read this book. I lived inside it.
It broke my heart and handed it back in better shape. My favorite, always.
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