Wally Lamb

I really, truly, honest-to-god am not exaggerating when I say this is one of the worst books I ever read while I was an adult. Lamb hasn't written an actual story so much as he's bound together a series of advice columns and chat show episodes dressed up in vague narrative form. The girl's father leaves! Then she gets raped! Then she gains weight! Then her roommate is mean to her! Then she loses weight but hooks up with a bad boyfriend! Then some more bad things happen to her after that! And show more more still after that! And on and on, ad nauseam. Someone should have told Lamb that dreaming up parade of horribles isn't the same as writing a novel. Save yourself 500 pages and watch a couple episodes of Dr. Phil instead. Awful, awful, awful book. If I could give it less than one star, I would.

Addendum: Every so often, someone comes along and flags this review as having spoilers. Complaining about spoilers in this review is, not to put too fine a point on it, really stupid. Most of the plot points I mention here are either in the actual cover copy of the book, in the Goodreads summary, or occur somewhere within the first ten pages or so. The rest are so vague (e.g., hooking up with a bad boyfriend -- a plot point that probably occurs in some form in, oh, half of the books ever written) that if you consider them "spoilers," I'm not really sure why you read book reviews at all.

Further addendum: If you're about to complain about spoilers in this review, please see comment 55 below. If you're that hysterical about spoilers, maybe stop reading online reviews before you read the book. Also, the book was published well over 30 years ago and I think the statute of limitations has really run on this one. Rosebud was his sled!! show less

A complex story told by the voices of different family members -- all of them believable and honest. With important lessons about the devastating damage done by secrets and the healing powers of telling the truth.

At its heart this is a story about love, family and relationships. Anna Oh, an artist, wife, and mother is ending her 27 year marriage to Orion, a psychologist. Because Anna has fallen in love with Viveca, the art dealer who is behind Anna's success. This decision is difficult on show more her three children -- twins Ariane and Andrew and the youngest, Marissa.

As Anna and Viveca go about planning their wedding in their small hometown in Connecticut -- there are painful resentments and truths that begin to surface. About marriage, about family life, about the changing landscape of art, racism and American society.

One of the reasons Wally Lamb is such a gifted writer is his ability to make us empathetic with each character's perspective. And in constructing this novel, Lamb gives each main character his or her own voice -- allowing each to narrate different chapters.

There is both welcome humor and deep understanding in the way he writes about the the essence of our collective need for love and meaning in our lives. show less

“I think... the secret is to just settle for the shape of your life takes...Instead of you know, always waiting and wishing for what might make you happy.”

Damn, but this is one of those hard books to rate, think about, and review. It's a cauldron of chaos, a literary train wreck written into the character's life. We're with Dolores from a young age, and we go through the agonies of aging and tragedy with her. So. Much. Tragedy!

It's a book I couldn't take in all at once - instead I had show more to ingest small doses, then come back to it later. Wally Lamb writes cleverly well - his wording sucked me in when I dared to continue Dolores' depressing story. There's symbolism, there's growth, there's walking backward, there's surprises, there's pain and beauty.

Dolores is hard to identify with - in one way this book is so honest, touching upon things people don't mention enough. Obesity and Aids and rape and horrible husbands and death and...well, so much. This is in no way a simple novel about a woman overcoming obesity. Does she ever survive and find herself? Or does she just survive and find herself in a realistic way, the only way people ever really can?

In some ways Dolores was a turn off, and I don't mean her weaknesses, because I understood those. I mean her lashing out and willingness to hurt those close to her so easily. I know it was because of her age at some point, her anger and frustration and teenage hormones - later I know it was because of her rage and because that was the only way she knew how to fight back. I sympathized with her - she went through awful, horrible stuff. I understood when she fell because so many have fallen there too. I didn't mind that - there was just something a little mean-spirited about her, but I guess that's another thing that makes her a more realistic and honest character.

This book is heavy - I don't mean just length, although that's considerable, but because I went through so many long phases with Dolores, phases that were enough to cover a whole novel by each phase itself. I figured when I got to a point, then the rest of the novel would keep following it. But no, more cycles would start and begin, life was lived a long time in these pages, from a child with the world shattered to a woman nearing forty who has found a semblance, finally, of peace.

I struggled between a three and four star rating. The subject matter, the writing style, the heavy depth deserve four stars. I think I didn't enjoy the second half as much, I was growing impatient with it, how it was draining me, and maybe that sucked a rating away from my enjoyment.

I do have to say that She's Come Undone is different, it's daring, it's honest, it's heartbreaking (really), but it's also wonderful and deserves a read. Definitely not a book I'll forget, and it's not something I've read before.

For Dolores, like for so many of us, there's that ray of hope that is at the same time covered with reality's bleakness. show less

This book is about a woman being kicked down a hill again and again and hitting the bottom. Her life is crazy, her life is unfair. Dolores is very hate-able, very pitiable. She's a flawed woman, terribly flawed, her situations and experiences are awful and depressing, this book in general is awful and depressing.

Dolores is our main character, the book has us follow her from age four to forty. Her life is rife with bad sex, bad partners, obesity, abuse, loss, and her wondering how life can be show more any more shit, then slowly climbing back within the last chapter. It's messy, it's horrible, it's a book I thoroughly enjoyed because each kick was her rolling downhill, she'd hit the bottom and we'd have her kicked again, hemorrhoid cream from rough anal sex, crying all night and hating her reflection, people dying, her dreams gone, she sank and sank and sank until she floated.

This book isn't perfect, its characters are not perfect, nothing here is perfect, it's an ugly gaping mess coming undone. Woman problems written by someone who is not a woman but nailed even so. The pettiness, the karma, the resentment. This book brings out so much of the craziness of life, or the chaos. We never know how hard it just might hit us within a year, a week, a month, even a decade. Dolores is that person, and a very messy person at that! show less