I'm astounded by the fact that so many people have such a visceral reaction about how much they hate this book. I've heard people dislike it because a lot of bad things happen to the narrator, and they find it overwhelming. But I've read a lot of reviews that specifically mention the "bonding with the whale"-part. First of all, it's not the best part of the book, but it's not terrible. Secondly, it lasts for 2, maybe 3 pages. Get over it.

I read this book when I was 17 years old and fell in love with it. Wally Lamb has a gift for writing in the female voice (upon my first reading, I had to check the front of the book a few times to make sure the author was, in fact, named "Wally"). The novel follows the life of Dolores Price, from the ages of 4 to 40. Many unfortunate things happen to Dolores including an eating disorder, emotionally abusive relationships (of all sorts), her mother's death, etc. These are not lone events, meant to bruise and batter the reader--all of the things that happen to Dolores are built upon one another to create a cohesive portrait of a woman undone. The book is not just sad, the main character not entirely without redemption--just as in real life. It is a wonderful novel and is worth everyone's time.

La historia de Dolores es triste y desgarradora, pero la vida también tiene sus momentos buenos.
A través de las quinientas y pico de páginas que componen este libro, descubrimos a una protagonista que a cada párrafo se torna aún más real, que nos muestra de forma descarnada cómo la vida la ha golpeado una y otra vez, y cómo, a pesar de ello, con momentos buenos y malos, siguió adelante.
Dolores, y todos los personajes que la rodean, nos muestran que la vida es un camino repleto de curvas, de baches y de emboscadas, y que solo siguiendo adelante es como se puede vivir.
Tocando fondo puede considerarse una novela netamente dramática, pero en el fondo busca enseñarnos mucho sobre la vida, y mostrándonos justamente cómo es la vida de una niña que se ve obligada a enfrentar a sus peores pesadillas. Muy recomendable.

I hated this book. I don't know how I managed to finish it. I have read some of the reviews where the readers were impressed with how well the male author relayed a story of a struggling woman. Are you kidding me? I found it insulting that this guy thinks that is how a woman would behave. Let me tell you something, I have gone through some hard times in my life, never did I find myself personifying a whale while sitting next to it watching it die. In my opinion, the story was about her descent into insanity - but, apparently where I read "insanity" some found "profundity." No. Nothing profound there. Just painful to my senses.

Let me put it this way: if this book were wine, it wouldn't even be Boone's Farm. 'Nuff said.

The experience of reading this book is roughly analogous to being slowly and painfully impaled with a stake, just without the blessed oblivion of death at the end. But I wouldn’t really know—I’ve never been impaled. It’s entirely possible this book is more painful than that.

So sad. So beautiful.

The language is silky smooth, like freshly shaved legs, and Lamb has an incredible gift for putting hard-to-express emotions into print.

Still, the book is hard to read at times because protagonist Delores Price is so... vulnerable. She is awkward and broken and occasionally disgusting. I found myself loving her defenselessness at times, but at other times I wanted to scream, "enough already!"

Plus, Price's life circumstances are so extreme, they could easily find a home on the Lifetime Movie Network, and sometimes that gets to be a little much.

Still, I'm giving the book four stars because of Lamb's tender observations and his gorgeous prose.

(Side note: The author should have done a bit more research regarding the various stages of obesity. His protagonist is pretty darn fat at one point, but the author clearly says she's 250 pounds, and at that weight, a woman looks nowhere near the shockingly obese description he gives. She'd have to weigh at least a hundred pounds more to look and move the way he describes.)

oh wow - i just finished this book now ... really really enjoyed it ..!!

the style of writing totally works for me. one of those books i simply couldn't put down. every night in bed i said to myself, okay - come on, it's late, you have to sleep now, one more page, that's it - mmm, i ended up turning page after page.

this is my first book by this author, and i'm a fan now - can't wait to read his other books.

amazing how he can get get into the head of a woman, being a man, and write her whole life story and all the difficult things she went through. there are so many lessons, so many things that you think long and hard ... so worth the read.

I want to start out by saying that I read *I know this much is true* by Wally Lamb and would rate it in my top 5 favorite books of all time, so this review shouldn't deter anyone from reading his work.
I read some of the other reviews before writing this and I was surprised at how many women were shocked that a man could write such a convincing woman's perspective.
I know MANY insightful, perceptive men who understand women, so I don't find it a stretch that a man can write with a woman's voice. This is creative fiction after all.

If you were to take all the cliches' present in a difficult upbringing--physical and sexual abuse, sexual experimentation, growing up the fat kid, making continuous bad choices, demonizing men, dealing with someone with HIV, and then write a book with polarized characters who rarely find a common ground, you would end up with this book.

I take issue mostly with the character of Dante and his relationship with Dolores.
After a very traumatic upbringing, Dolores finally ends up in college. While there, she develops a very involved secret crush on a roommates’ boyfriend. Years later she runs across a picture of him, tracks down where he lives (without the internet), moves across the country and into his building (the flat directly across the hall, no less) and gets him to fall in love with and marry her in very short order. WHAT? She’s been a withdrawn, traumatized fat girl for the majority of her life but as soon as she loses weight and meets Dante, she develops these mad boyfriend-acquiring skills that turn him from lothario to devoted partner and husband. Please.
I can see randomly running across a picture of someone you recognize from your past, but everything after that was completely unbelievable.

Dante seemed merely a pawn, convenient to the author for whatever drama he wanted to introduce to Dolores, but there was no consistency in him throughout the book.
As a youth he's a loving and devoted Christian, when Dolores meets him he's a womanizing playboy but becomes an attentive thoughtful, boyfriend, then he turns into a critical and selfish spouse, then a cheat, then a virtual pedophile.

The next thing that made me go hmmm was that he took what was initially a positive gay relationship and threw in *the AIDS thing* to muck it all up. It was almost as if he said to himself *Okay. Now my characters are moving into the early 1980's. What was the drama happening then?* and chose AIDS.

Assuming that the gay characters were monogamous (which he surely alluded to) the only way they could have been exposed was through a breakup, so he randomly threw one in.
I don’t know many gay 50yo’s that break up mostly happy LTR’s in the hopes of finding better, especially in a small town and time where gay is still considered deviant.
I live in SF. I have scores of gay friends. I guess with my life experience, I just don't see the monogamous mid-life gay couple as the ones getting HIV.

The good things I WILL say about this book is that his writing is always amazingly descriptive, his characters have depth and texture (if not believability) and his stories are epic.

I will surely read more from him, but with a more critical eye now that he's fallen off the first impression pedestal I've put him on.
This was his first book, too, so I give him leeway for that.

I don't know why I waited so long to read this novel! Dolores Price is quite a character and this is now on my favorite books list. I know I'm late to the party, but I highly recommend this if you haven't already read it.

Loaned via Inter-Library service. I have felt much more empathy with Dolores on this second read fifteen years after I first read this. Was Dolores's personality formed by being overweight or was she that type of person regardless? Sadly, she realises that as one movie character from another film says "High school is never over." In college and her working life, she finds that cliques and how you look always affect you; thus she finds herself an outsider. I think that Lamb does a reasonably good job in speaking from the female point of view and he provides many minor characters and various issues which keeps the reader interested. While I Know This Much Is True is still my favorite Lamb novel, She's Come Undone is also a good offering. 3.75★

***NO SPOILERS***

Reviewing this more than a decade after I read it, I no longer remember specifics beyond one especially troubling (and unnecessary) scene. What I do remember well is how frank the story is, often upsettingly so. As I discovered in my attempt to read The Hour I First Believed, Wally Lamb likes to cram several big, complex issues into a single bleak story, and She's Come Undone has this same flaw. As a storyteller, he's a mess. I can't justify spending reading time on another Lamb book when so many others tell more sophisticated, emotionally balanced stories that explore all the nuance of their themes.

OMG! I was so disappointed in this book. It was not what I thought it was gonna be. I HATED the character until the last couple of chapters. I know this book got lots of great ratings and reviews, and I'm probably gonna be viewed as an idiot, but we just did not mix. It was like water and oil, two magnets repelling each other.


I thought I was going to pretty much love this book. I've dealt with weight issues all of my life, so I figured I could really relate to the character. I don't know, I should have probably felt more sympathy for the character. But I just couldn't. This took me damn near a week to read. At times I would clean the house to avoid reading it. Now, that is not a good thing, LOL. It should be that I put off cleaning until I get to a part of the book where I can lay it down. That's how it usually works...


The main character Dolores just simply pissed me off. She is a spoiled rotten brat. Then an angry, bitchy, cruel teen. Then, a fucked up adult. At times I wanted to put my foot up her ass and wear her as a snowshoe. She is either blaming herself for everything or blaming everybody else. I saw a lot of similarities between her and I, less then perfect childhood, abused, bullied. One would have thought it would have made me more sympathetic to her plight. Nope, wasn't the case. I made plenty of stupid choices in my life and regret the way I reacted to a lot of it. Wished I would have reacted a little more mature at times. Maybe that's why I didn't like her. She didn't rise above, she let herself get pulled down and almost drowned.


And I hated the end. LOL

It was just too abrupt. It ended and I was like "what?" "That's it?" and then "Dumb..."


That's just my opinion. I'm sure for many others this book is fabulous. There is nothing wrong with the way it was written. It flowed along seamlessly. The characters weren't missing anything. It's just me...LOL