Product Description

Dolores Price is the wry and overweight, sensitive and pained, cynical heroine of this novel. The story follows her from four to 40, from her shattered family life through the hellish circles of sexual and food abuse to her gradual recovery and her fight to love again.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #14226 in Books
• Published on: 1999-12-06
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 416 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
"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 among the most loathsome creatures ever to go by the name of man. But Dolores is no quitter; she battles her woes with a sense of self-indulgence and gluttony rivalled 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.

Review
A tremendously likable first novel about the catastrophe-marked childhood, youth, and mangled adulthood of a tough-fibered woman who almost beaches herself in guilt and grief. Terrible things are about to happen to Dolores Price, only child of brittle, vulnerable Bernice and weak, randomly abusive Tony. Tony leaves Bernice sometime after the stillbirth of their son, and after a week playing with little Dolores in a new backyard pool, when the child expects a lifetime of floating with Daddy. Then Bernice completely flips out and goes to a mental hospital; Dolores is taken to live with Grandma in Rhode Island on Pierce Street (which "smelled of car exhaust and frying food. Glass shattered, people screamed, kids threw rocks"). Later, Ma returns and works collecting tolls on the Newport Bridge, while friendless Dolores attends a corrosive parochial school. But all welcome Grandma's new tenant, dazzling Jack, a radio DJ who, when Dolores is 13, rapes her in a dog pound. The person Dolores runs to is heart-of-gold Roberts, empress of the Peacock Tattoo Emporium across the street. In spite of the strangled but loyal love of Ma and Grandma, the palship of Roberts, and the kindness of a gentle gay guidance-counsellor, Dolores is about to go under. She becomes a mountain of fat, and soon is convinced that she's responsible for the death of Jack's baby - but also of Bernice, who's killed by a car. At a Pennsylvania college, Dolores knows that her destiny is to "kill what people love." There's some good psychiatry and a bad marriage before the peaceful and upbeat close. Lamb has a broad satiric touch with some satisfying fat targets (the warfare of Pierce Street, etc.). And in spite of hard, hard times and crazy coincidences, Dolores' career is a pleasure to follow, as she barrels through - with a killer mouth and the guts of a sea lion. A warmblooded, enveloping tale of survival, done up loose and cheering. (Kirkus Reviews)

Synopsis
Dolores Price is the wry and overweight, sensitive and pained, cynical heroine of this novel. The story follows her from four to 40, from her shattered family life through the hellish circles of sexual and food abuse to her gradual recovery and her fight to love again.

Customer Reviews

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I read two or three books a week, every week. And although i often think i'm going to save 'this book' to read again, 'She's Come Undone' is the only one that I have pulled off the shelf twice (in fact three times!) This is my favourite book ever, and not because it's easy reading, or takes me to a different world. This book is real, too real, in fact so real that i have given it to friends who phone me crying half way through because they think it was written for them; how is Wally Lamb a bloke???? If you have ever felt bad cos you are too fat, or cos you are not included in the beautiful/cool gangs, then this book is for you. Wally Lamb, in this and his subsequent book, is a magnificent wordsmith and truly understands people. This book truly changed my life, and saved me a small fortune in therapy.

HIs second best work is still better than most writer's first
If you haven't read "I Know This Much is True," run, don't walk to get it. Then get this book---"She's Come Undone." While I loved Lamb's "I Know" this book comes in second, and that' still better than most other's books.

The story is about one horrible human being named Dolores, but don't be turned off by that. Lamb sucks you right into her world and how he writes "women" so well is beyond me.

There are laugh out loud funny parts of this novel, and if you're reading it on the Tube, you might want to watch yourself--I know I had a lot of blokes staring at me. I also missed a couple of stops simply because I couldn't stop reading. But I digress.

About Dolores: She's not likable, but somehow Lamb gets us to read about her. And he adds in rape, emotional abuse, and a couple of deaths and you begin to get the picture of WHY Dolores is the way she is.

Lamb truly unravels the human heart in "She's Come Undone" and other than his first book, which I've just given a plug to, I would also recommend the highly controversial and entertaining "Bark of the Dogwood" which is every bit as good and involved. Not exactly the same subject but treated every bit as good if not better.

She's Come Undone and it's not about the song
How any author could make Dolores Price likeable is beyond me, but Wally Lamb has done so. She's obese, foul-mouthed, and not much to look at, and on top of that, she's pretty disgusting. Wally Lamb somehow gets us to look at her world through her eyes and we end up being better educated for it. Not a short book, but readable and enjoyable.