This is another book where I'm kind of at a loss as to what, exactly, I think of it. I didn't hate it. I certainly didn't love it. I never rushed to get back to it, but it wasn't a chore to read.

Which brings me to: meh.

It's okay.

The story of Dolores has a lot of fat shaming, which drives me crazy. She collects a chosen family around her at the end, of people who take care of each other, and I enjoyed that very much. She's often self-centered and the rest of the world seems not to exist around the main character, which makes her irritating as hell.

Yeah. I didn't hate it. But it's somewhere on the continuum that's very near the tipping point into that territory. But not quite. I wouldn't recommend it to my friends, but neither would I knock it out of someone's hand with a "what the hell are you thinking?"

Damning with faint praise? That seems about right.

After I bought this book, I read the reviews that said that this book was terrible, and that a male author writing about a teenage girl was ridiculous and out-of-touch. I immediately thought I had made a mistake - but it turns out my only mistake was reading the reviews.

This story begins with Delores navigating becoming a teenager. We then see her move through her teens, twenties and thirties while trying to manage her past traumas and unhealthy coping mechanisms (which have caused her to become obese). Delores is incredibly fragile, but with a tough exterior and a dark outlook on life. At times I found her to be a bit frustrating, but you can't help but root for her to make it.

While I ended up really becoming invested in this story and enjoying it, you should be warned that there is a lot of difficult topics here. The list of content warnings is long, and the subject matter is presented in a very raw and jarring way - so read with caution. All of that being said, I truly enjoyed this book and got goosebumps at the end.

I think I was 15 when I first read this book. 1995ish. And I hadn’t read it since then. I gave it 5 stars when I added it to GR Bc I remember it being impactful. Little details stuck with me - dolores’ anger. Her weight. Golden curls on a giant of a man. The whale.

On the reread it fell far flatter. Dolores is a miserable human being. With reason, of course. She lies and makes bad decisions and self-destructs over and over. Most uncomfortable for me was how she continually lashed out. I know that hurt people hurt people. But understanding Dolores did not make her any more likable.

I gave this book three stars because, for the most part, I looked forward to picking it up each chance I got. I did not connect with it emotionally - which felt poignant given how 15 year old me felt represented by dolores’s sarcasm and anger. To 40 year old me she felt like a bit of a nitwit and a simplistic being. The last 60 pages or so snatched us from the 2 star ledge by shifting the focus away from Dolores Dolores Dolores for a little bit - reminding us there are other people allowed to suffer and grieve and live.

The book’s intro from the author focused on the many compliments he received for his ability to write a woman so realistically. I respectfully disagree. Dolores is a man’s idea of a woman-victim. Fat. Angry. Hurtful. Careening through life destroying things around her. Enduring 7 years of therapy and “healing” only to leap bizarrely into an unhealthy marriage from which she emerged like the proverbial Phoenix from the ashes - hesitantly ready to love an unhandsome but noble man. And only a baby could make things better. Oh brother.

"She's Come Undone" is the story of a troubled woman's journey through a difficult life. Dolores Price felt that she was caught in the middle of her parents' abusive marriage. Her father was a womanizer and her mother was emotionally fragile. After their divorce, Dolores moved to her grandmother's home in Rhode Island where she was friendless at her new school. Dolores went through some heartbreaking times, and comforted herself with overeating junk food. She had to deal with trauma, obesity, low self-esteem, guilt, and grief through her teens. Dolores had a wicked sense of humor, but she often turned hurtful and foul-mouthed. After years of therapy, life was not perfect, but she was able to cope better when life knocked her down again. Dolores met some interesting, unusual people who interacted with her, and some of the best parts of the book involved Dolores helping someone who was going through a bad time.

Wally Lamb wrote the character of a traumatized, depressed girl very well. The Connecticut author set the book in New England at the time he was growing up, so its sense of time and place rang true. However, a few of the situations seemed a little over the top. 3.5 stars.

In the beginning this book feels a little like chick lit on steroids, and I enjoyed all the pop culture references in the early chapters... but trust me, this isn't chick lit.

While at times the journey is unbelievable-- the feelings and emotions of Dolores Price who we meet at four and say goodbye to in her 30s run the gamut from pathetic to anger to deep sadness-- a lot of it felt authentic. There were times I related and other times I felt uncomfortable.

This book is ultimately about learning to love yourself and the others around you, despite all faults, defects and past sins. Nice debut novel!

(Reviewed 3/17/09)

I approached this book with the expectation that I would hate it--a book about a fat girl written by a man. However, once I started reading it, I was immediately drawn to the character of Dolores Price. This book is full of lovable and complex characters, all of whom I will miss now that I finished reading this novel. And there is so much wisdom here. Wally Lamb brought to life people and relationships so real they seemed at times to walk right off the page. I will definitely look for more of his books, and "She's Come Undone" is one more than worthy of rereading and lending to friends.

OMG! Why did I wait so long to read this book?! LOVED IT!

Update: I found an old review I wrote about this book for an online book club I used to be in. I clearly hated it. Here it is, more or less in its entirety.


To be blunt, I didn't like it. It's hard to know where to begin when explaining my dislike for 'She's Come Undone.' Wally Lamb, to be sure, wrote very...believably. I felt like it was a girl writing. However, the fact of the matter is that I'm a man, and I have no idea how a woman thinks. Therefore, I'm clearly not the best judge of this.

My first problem was the paper-thin development of male characters in the story. Perhaps I'm being picky, but I thought all the male characters. In the best cases they had no depth. In the worst cases their actions didn't even make sense.

Let's first explore the "Daddy" character. He is a stock deadbeat dad. Not all that attentive or a good parent when he was around, and then he disappears. And when he does so, we are left to fill in the blanks with vague details of his life. He is remarried. He is divorced again. He is remarried again. He doesn't write. He makes empty promises. Blah blah blah. We can understand why Dolores is so angry with him, but we are given only a cursory glimpse to his emotions, what drives him. Towards the end of the novel his wife writes Dolores and tells her that he was "a good man." And it leaves Dolores to wonder, 'was he a good man?' This was a good device, because we are left to wonder as Dolores did. However, the fact remains that we were given very little of the character. He was a tool, a means to make Dolores what she grew into (quite literally). But "Daddy" is probably one of the better male characters. (A side note, and to answer Megan's question, I think it was a blatant device used by Lamb in having Dolores refer to her deadbeat father as "daddy" constantly. He was clearly, in my mind anyway, attempting to connect Dolores's father's leaving as the end of Dolores's innocence, the end of her childhood, as shortly after she was violated by Jack. And maybe that is truly how such a thing would happen. But, as useful a device as that may have been, I find it trite, because I cannot bring myself to believe that a young woman with so much hate towards her father that she would cuss him out at her mother's funeral and cut off all contact with him for her entire life would continue to refer to him as "daddy" throughout the course of her tormented life. But that's just my opinion.)

Thayer. A stock nice guy meant to contrast Jack and Dante. Beyond that, he really serves no purpose aside from offering Dolores a type of redemption.

Jack and Dante. Now, I feel that they were basically the same character. Which was appropriate, because they both did complete 180's in their personality. Someone in an earlier post mentioned that there were "clues" as to their true nature. With Jack, I disagree. It was complete bullshit.

First of all, all we were given of Jack was how wonderful he was. In fact, at the end the chapter in which we are introduced to Jack and his generically cute wife Dolores says the whole family fell in love with a couple. Which is true in a sense, in that Jack won the family over. But what of his wife? No one seemed to like her. Dolores's mother was fucking Jack, so clearly she didn't love his wife. And Dolores complains that his wife isn't good enough for Jack, that she is not pretty enough or some such nonsense. No, no, it was Jack they fell in love with. And initially you can see why. He is handsome and fun, very likable. But then he is completely different, and we are given no good reason why. He starts out like an all-American neighbor who suddenly devolves into a degenerate because, why, because he is giving Dolores rides home after school? Because his wife wanted to get pregnant? It didn't make sense. There were no hints at all until he started giving Dolores rides home after school and swearing and acting like a generally rude asshole. And to me that felt contrived, as if Lamb was saying, "see, it shouldn't be surprising that he is raping her. He swore and yelled at her in the car a few times! He's not the guy we all thought he was!"

But that's just it! Lamb sets Jack up as this great guy and then artificially tears him down. Jack didn't even feel like the caricature he was purported to be. It was like two different people, and the only common thread was that Dolores had a crush on him and he was called Jack.

Let us just take a moment to review Dante. We are clearly meant to draw parallels from Jack to Dante. Both were introduced to us as good men. Then they were arbitrarily turned into child molesters when the situation fit (i.e. when it would ruin Dolores's life). To be honest, the only thing that even hinted at what Dante would become when he was religious and vulnerable is the letter where he says he does not want to become a womanizer. But, in brief, he is a religious, vulnerable virgin as a young man and a verbally (and on one occasion, physically) abusive, arrogant, sex-obsessed adult.

And he decides that Dolores is the one from the get-go. Why? Mr. Wing (the landlord) mentions that he is quite the womanizer. The teacher at the dance alludes to the exotic women he used to date. He clearly gets off on young girls (as we see at the dance and his relationship with Sheila). But Dolores steps into his life, he beds her immediately and then, just as quickly gives up on all other women. Moves in with Dolores and eventually marries her. I realise that there are arguments for why this could happen (she's easy to live with as she just considers herself lucky to have him; but I find that bullshit because he clearly isn't intellectually stimulated by her, and I doubt he is intellectually stimulated by hot high school girls), in short, I'm not really buying them. They are not logical in life or the story. So, essentially, Dante is simply there to be the adult Jack--physically and emotionally raping Dolores until she is able to defend herself and leave. But he is not believable.

And finally, Dolores. I have so many questions. She gets fat and depressed for good reasons. Fine, all very well. I sympathize. College breaks her and she goes nuts, has a brief lesbian encounter (but, come on, what young girl doesn't experiment with that sort of thing in college? Am I right ladies?) and freaks out about it and, generally, her life. So she runs away, swims with a beached whale, goes crazy and ends up in a mental institute. And boy, does she go crazy. Biting her tongue til it bleeds? Mutalating herself in various ways? Why? I read that sort of thing and I was fucking shocked. I mean, she was depressed, sure, but why did she start mutalating herself? Because she was in a mental hospital? I don't buy it at all. I feel like it was simply stereotypical bullshit thrown out by Lamb for shock value, as if to say to the reader, "look....look what her life has done to her!" Ridiculous. In fact, I found the entire mental hospital to be a load of bullshit, from the "therapy" she alternately accepts and rejects (which she should have just outright rejected, because, maverick or no maverick, Dr. Shaw belonged in that hospital as a patient, not a doctor. That scene where he is talking to Dolores in the "womb" (pool) was just creepy. It made me uncomfortable.) to the way she leaves. Completely contrived. Why did she leave? Everything was going well, so she started "etch-a-sketching" (a clear connection to her mother and her painting, specifically the flying leg painting. Both are left of what you would expect, even in creative outlets) and then decided to abruptly abandon the therapy before completion due to some psychic. That was completely out of character, at least out of the character Lamb had fleshed out for us in the mental hospital. She was just starting to come around and be a functioning human being again, and she suddenly throws it all away because of some psychic? It didn't make sense, felt contrived, a plot device to keep the story moving and avoid it getting bogged down in the mental hospital.

So I feel like this is getting a little long, so I will skip ahead to what I consider the third part of Dolores's life, when she leaves Dante and moves back into her Grandmother's house. And I will skip most of that, because it was dull and uneventful (she puts her life back together, grand) and go to the part that stuck out for me the most. That was the contrived fight she has with Rita, where Rita falls down the stairs and ends up in the hospital. What the fuck was that all about? I mean, seriously, where did that come from? Everything is going great. Rita tells Dolores she should buy a car with her money, Dolores is leaning towards a satellite and big television. So she gets it. Fair enough? Apparently not. Apparently Lamb is angry that not enough people read these days (rightfully so, I would say, but that is beside the point) and continued his quest to make television out to be one of the main villains in Dolores life, by having the television lead her into another depression (which he lazily tries to attribute to sudden recurrent sad feelings about Dante, but it doesn't fly. We are basically left to assume that the TV just plain makes her lazy. Period.). And so Rita comes over and, apparently, yells that Dolores should have bought a car instead of a big TV, which leads Dolores to freak out and scream at her and Rita falls, and Dolores gets more depressed and starts walking around in 3-D glasses all the time. I mean, are you serious? Did I miss something? Just bullshit. Plain and simple. It's as if Lamb felt there wasn't enough heartache, that things were going too well and he didn't want to end the story just yet. (Which also explains the return of Mr. Pucci, because, after all, what story set in the mid 80's is complete without a personal reference to the AIDS epidemic?).

In summation, I felt the book was trite and contrived.

This story of a woman from childhood to her thirties was an interesting case study. I enjoyed following this journey, and it has a happy ending. It should have been sadder, but I appreciate the story being told so we can form our own ideas and just watch with curiosity instead of drowning in the morose.

my therapist recommended this book i love her

Yes. I hated this book. I read it about ten years ago, and it pissed me off. To this day I refer to it as "that goddamn whale book." What repelled me then is that the main character, a fat girl, bonds with a real fucking whale and it's supposed to be Deep and Meaningful. "Yes, Mr. Whale. I am a fat girl. I, too, am a whale. We understand one another." Please. Try harder, Wally. Also, the fat girl hates herself so has a creepily awkward lesbian hookup with a janitor and subsequently kills said janitor's fish. I read that part as weird homophobic classist shit, at least back then, and that's the impression that will stand, because I'm never reading it again.

I don't know why everyone was beside themselves about Lamb as a man writing a female POV, either. Who fucken cares? How come no one makes a huge fuss like that when a woman writes a male POV? This book is so annoying. Argh.

This is a novel written in the first person, from the point of view of a 12-year old girl (at the start of the book, anyway). I'm pretty sure Wally Lamb isn't a 12-year-old girl, and part of the enjoyment of reading She's Come Undone is how astonishingly well he pulls it off. It is written so well, the details and feelings in it are so painfully personal, that I spent a lot of time wondering how the hell a middle-aged man managed to channel a depressed, disadvantaged, fat, miserable, funny, angry, resourceful, vulnerable 12-year-old girl, with such absolute conviction. The character of Dolores is so realistically written that it is hard to believe it's not a memoir.

You know those books about childhood that romanticize and idealize it? The kids in such books are all plucky and essentially good and sweet. The villains are always completely villainous, and always get what they deserve. Sometimes it's nice to read these stories, especially if you want to escape reality for a while. She's Come Undone is not one of this type. The protagonist, Dolores, is a real kid. She's troubled, occasionally vicious, greedy, lost, funny, bright, kind. All the things that real kids are. And her childhood - like most real childhoods - is a minefield of danger, shame, fear, and vulnerability. Her eventual triumphs are realistic, too. There is no white horse and handsome prince, but she does come out okay in the end, after a long series of horrifyingly funny, desperately sad, bizarre events. Sounds like real life to me, and this is a great story, as well as a virtual textbook on how to fully inhabit a character who is superficially nothing like yourself.