Wally Lamb does an excellent job of writing from the perspective of a woman... I guess, I'm a woman, and I don't work that way. Everything I have ever read from Lamb has been wonderfully written with a good storyline that I could connect to, but I hated She's Come Undone.

The slothfulness and blaming done in this was ridiculous; I hated the characters. I wanted to yell at these people to get their acts together. I suppose this was the point; the book was well written and the characters had depth. This may be why it is easy to be mad at them for screwing up. I know this, but I still hated it.

Trigger Warnings: rape, obesity, mental illness, suicidal ideation, miscarriage, abortion, infidelity, spousal abuse

This book has been my all-time favorite for a very long time, and I re-read it every couple of years (this was my 4th time!). Each time, it’s as good as the first. This fantastically written, tragic, and heartbreaking story follows the main character, Dolores Price, from childhood to adulthood, as she is forced to navigate through many losses and one trauma after another. It’s full of unique and complex characters- I have such love for this motley crew! The character development in this story is beyond phenomenal, and Dolores is by far the best female character I’ve ever read about. Wally Lamb writes from a female perspective like no other author can, leaving the reader no choice but to feel fiercely protective of her, root like hell for her, and love her unconditionally. Despite her roughened edges, Dolores is real, flawed, funny, and lovable, and is just trying to find her place in the world amidst more heartbreak and challenges than one person should ever have to endure. You will find sprinkles of humor and sarcasm in this story that help to alleviate some of the heaviness.
This book is just so near and dear to my heart. I look forward to re-reading this book many times in the years to come.

Fat girl eats a lot of roast beef and throws up. Then she feels better.

Oh and its written by a man who is absolutely impecable at capturing the feminine adolescent bi-polar voice. Cause I know when I'm at the book store I'm like ok can you tell me where the Feminine adolescent bi-polar section is?.....

I'm going to be honest, I was quite young when I read this...maybe 15...but it was one of those stories that simply sticks in your brain. I hated it. With everything in me...nothing about this was uplifitng whatsoever and it ends with her bonding with a whale. oooh, amazing. Every turn of the page displayed yet something even more depressing until you were ready to scream...she was depressed and obsessive and fat and slightly lesbionic and trapped herself with a man whom she created really in her mind. I wanted to feel sorry for her, especially because her life was so messed up but it seems she did nothing to help herself but only proceeded to make things worse.
The most I got out of this was wondering if one could actually loose weight by imagining your food had mold on it like she did.

This was my first reread of 2020. I deleted my old review. This is the first book I’m cleaning house with. The first time around I gave it 5 stars but it’s dropped to a 2 star. Things are just different now, I’m different and if a book has stopped moving or exciting me in some way, it’s going to the trade in box for someone else out there.

Mel

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.

I'm amazed by how many people hated this book. I had mixed feelings about it. Yes, the characters and situations were godawful, and at times it was more than a little contrived. A lot of people on this forum said it was hard to believe that so many horrible things could happen to one person - that I don't think is true. I have known people who have had that many horrible things happen to them. But some of the situations were pretty far-fetched. But I remember finding this book utterly fascinating and being unable to put it down. I'm not even sure why - it was such a horrifying book, but I guess it had a "train wreck" quality to it. I still remember this book so well even though I read it years ago. Even though I didn't relate to it personally that much, something about that book just stayed with me long after I read it.

I hate this book. Let me just get that out of the way first!

I also have to admit to having personal knowledge of the author - which in no way colors my opinion of this book. Mr. Lamb was a writing teacher at my high school in CT and actually helped me quite a bit in writing my college application essays. I got in to every school I applied for - even my reach school - and I am positive that the essay I wrote was the biggest tipping point. My essay was really good and it was wholly because of Mr. Lamb and his suggestions, pointers and all around encouragement. As a person, Mr. Lamb is wonderful and I will always remember him with high praise.

Which is part of the reason why I wanted to love this book so much. I loved Mr. Lamb. He was the teacher all the students wanted to work with and to have a book of his published! And on Oprah!!! So I picked it up and was so excited - I think I read it in two days or something.

That build up may explain my intense dislike for the book now. Too much hype to live up to. Regardless, I hated the main character. She was a "sad sack" type. Very much a Charlie Brown type - the character who is very nice, NEVER gets a break, is inexplicably constantly treated like crap by everyone around them without deserving it, and makes the trials of Job look like a tropical vacation. After while, I have to say - enough is enough!!! The book became incredibly predictable - not conventionally, i.e. boy meets girl, etc - but rather, if there was a situation described and you imagined the worst possible outcome, that is what would happen! Imagine yourself baking a cake. What's the worst that could happen? Burn the cake moments before the birthday party? Amateur. No, the correct answer is have the gas flowing but the pilot light go out until a spark happens when you slip on the floor in non-skid slippers causing a gigantic explosion that kills the neighbors and innocent children who happened to be arriving for the party at that exact moment but blowing you out the window to safety where you land relatively unharmed but now burned with guilt for the rest of your life. Oh yeah, and the neighborhood now hates you and has voted you out of the community so you are homeless. Now you get the idea. That is what this book reads like - page after page after page of it.

I hated the character (unbelievably wimpy), the story (the ridiculous situations and absurd outcomes), and the plot (which meandered and was like walking with a 2 year old - you had to stop and fully investigate anything shiny before being allowed to move on).

So if you are only somewhat depressed but not quite suicidal yet, this is the book for you. Everyone else should stay away in droves.

If you ever get a chance to meet the actual author, please do - you'll come out better for it.

And my last little comment, try to never read a lesbian sex scene written by a former teacher and mentor. You can never look at him the same again! I am actually glad that I have not met him since because I don't know if I could look at him the same way!!

I’m not sure why I read this entire, relentlessly depressing book, but I did. At about page 250, I thought, “Isn’t this over by now? I’m ready for this to be over.” And yet I kept reading, gaining and losing interest intermittently, until I reached the predictable, overtly sentimental close that didn’t compensate for the hundreds of pages of intricately detailed (and often contrived) human pain. Though the book was emotionally real in parts, its events and characters were largely unbelievable. It was simply over the top. I suppose, however, it was well written, or I wouldn’t have read it all.

There’s been a great deal of gushing over the fact that, despite being a man, Wally Lamb has managed to write a book from the point of view of a woman. I don’t really feel qualified to remark on his success (or lack thereof) in this regard, because, although a woman myself, I have been told on more than one occasion that I “think like a man,” whatever that means, but, as far as I can tell, it means I prefer discussions of politics and theology to discussions of shopping and home décor, which perhaps tells you something about the prima facie assumptions that lead people to pat men on the back for being able to penetrate the psyches of women. I don’t know if Wally Lamb accurately captures “the woman’s psyche,” because, you see, he’s not writing about “women,” but about a particular woman who suffers continuous abuse at the hands of person after person, year after year; who time and time again encounters an array of idiosyncratic people who hardly exist outside of Oprah Book Club selections; who manages to accomplish--or find herself the fortuitous recipient of--the highly unlikely on more than one occasion; and who finds life-affirming meaning in whales. Maybe I could have at least related to that last part…that is, when I was a 3rd grade girl.

I was irritated with the main character of this book for the first half of the story. Yeah, bad things had happened to her, but she did not need to wallow in it! I wanted to slap her and say "Wise up, get real, everyone has problems".

About the time I identified how completely her lies were tying her down - she broke free! I was so happy for her! At that point, the multiple truths of the book hit me full in the face and I was overwhelmed. This is one of those books that inspire you to "love your neighbor" out of the real sadness we all face and also because loving and letting others love you is what counts in this life.

i honestly couldn't tell you what i thought about this book. i'm not crazy about it, i'll tell you that much. i didn't know whether to hate Dolores or feel sorry for her. Like at times, I WANTED to feel sorry for her and sympathize for her but then she was a pretty nasty girl the way she treated some people and everything and the things that she did. I don't think because you have a hard life is really an excuse to be a bitch. I don't know. I thought it was going to be better the way people raved on about it but it wasn't anything special for me.

What surprised me about this novel was the strength of the voice of Dolores. She was so real. At times I would forget I was reading and when I would come to the end of a chapter it would almost startle me to look back up at my own living room. It was more like Dolores was right there in the flesh telling me her story. (She looks like Ricki Lake in my head.) There were times when I wanted to hug her, times when I wanted to roll my eyes and tell her to stop being a Drama Queen, and times when I wanted to tell her grow up and do the big girl thing. But of course I couldn't. She is fictional. She is isn't she?

What I didn't like was that the story rambled on without any apparent structure. I suppose if Dolores were really in my living room telling me her story this is how it would be...but it's a novel and I wanted more structure from it. The whole whale thing I thought was silly and didn't work for me.

Overall, Dolores and her story were so real to me that I enjoyed this one much more than I thought I would. It was fun to watch Dolores grow as a person. She finds herself and in the process of doing so learns to see others as fragile humans too. We all suffer. We all love. This is what makes us human and this is what make Dolores human too.