She's Come Undone (Oprah's Book Club)

Meet Dolores Price. She's 13, wise-mouthed but wounded, having bid her childhood goodbye. Stranded 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 orbits 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 she really goes under.

Amazon.com Review
Oprah Book Club® Selection, January 1997: "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." So begins the story of Dolores Price, the unconventional heroine of Wally Lamb's She's Come Undone. Dolores is a class-A emotional basket case, and why shouldn't she be? She's suffered almost every abuse and familial travesty that exists: Her father is a violent, philandering liar; her mother has the mental and emotional consistency of Jell-O; and the men in her life are probably the gender's most loathsome creatures. But Dolores is no quitter; she battles her woes with a sense of self-indulgence and gluttony rivaled only by Henry VIII. Hers is a dysfunctional Wonder Years, where growing up in the golden era was anything but ideal. While most kids her age were dealing with the monumental importance of the latest Beatles single and how college turned an older sibling into a long-haired hippie, Dolores was grappling with such issues as divorce, rape, and mental illness. Whether you're disgusted by her antics or moved by her pathetic ploys, you'll be drawn into Dolores's warped, hilarious, Mallomar-munching world.

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All Customer Reviews
Average Customer Review:
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:

Read aloud & loved by all on a rainy camping trip, 2008-11-11
We went on a camping trip with a bunch of teenagers 16 & above and all it did was rain, so to pass the time, we took turns reading aloud, and just could not put this book down. You will not easily forget Delores, because she lives in many of us. You will not be disappointed with this book, we all loved it.


0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:

Very good book. Not happy, but good., 2008-11-10
Definately not a "feel good" story but a good one. I like the way this writer writes and it's hard to believe this was written by a man. Wally Lamb is a man right?


0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:

great story, ok ending, 2008-10-13
Although I don't usually enjoy reading books, this one was really written well. It kept my attention and kept me wondering what was going to happen next. The only thing I wasn't too crazy about was how it ended. I invested a lot of my free time to read it and expected a better ending.


1 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

Well written, gripping, but horribly disturbing., 2008-10-13
Here it is 2008 and I just realized this book is 16 years old. I picked it up this weekend at the grocery store pulled in by the #1 Best Seller across the top. While the book is very well written and I literally couldn't put it down, I was stunned at the content. After I finished it, I told my husband that every single thing I find morally abhorrent was contained in this book.
1. Adultery - throughout.
2. Physical abuse - her parents were physically abusive as was Dolores.
3. Rape.
4. Incest - her own father pinched her breasts as a pre-teen and asked about her "walnuts".
5. Theft. She steals her roommates mail and justifys it it in her own mind.
6. Self-mutilation - cutting, burning, and even attempted suicide.
7. Omitted so as not to offend.
8. Abortion. And subsequent infertility. But the two are not linked in the story.
9. Parenting w/o a father. The adult character pressed a college classmate to make a baby with her with the thoughtlessness and self-centeredness of a teenager.
10. Gluttony - Her weight and her obsession with television.
11. Verbal abuse - The hatred that spewed from this character was inconceivable to me.
12. Self-centered parenting - Her mother allows her to smoke in the 8th grade, she has a mouth like a sailor and mom doesn't seem to care, her father takes off, and her mom sleeps with everything in sight completely ignoring the fact that her daughter is in distress at 257 pounds.

I guess what I find most disturbing about this book is that if read by teenage girls, it may give validation to all the things mentioned above. And those things mentioned above are eactly what has gone wrong with the morality of society. Whether anyone believes I'm closed minded or not, there is not one thing mentioned above that has benefitted society today in any single way. I'm sorry I wasted my money. And most of my used books go to the library, but not this one.


0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:

A quick read despite the 465 pages, 2008-09-04
The painful story of Dolores Price, a coming-of-age odyssey. Dolores is cynical and sarcastic and imminently lovable. We cheer for her at the same time that we are embarassed by her. An extremely quick read despite the 465 pages.

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