She's Come Undone by Wally Lamb

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She’s Come Undone by Wally Lamb


Here we have Dolores Price and her life.  See her at four when she watches TV for the first time. She rides her bike with friends at ten. By thirteen she’s fantasizing about men. At seventeen she is two hundred and fifty seven pounds. She has no respect for anyone, hates high school and doesn’t want to go to college. She has horrible relationships with her parents and absolute no use for authority figures. Dolores is willing to blame everyone but herself for everything that’s gone wrong in her life and isn’t sure what adulthood will bring. And this as they say is just the tip of the iceberg.  As she looks to her future, she still makes rash and hurried decisions that truly lead to her undoing.
                This novel didn’t pull me in right away. The storyline took awhile to really take shape to me. Dolores and her family seemed like an average 1960’s family, everything wasn’t perfect and you had a feeling something was off but nothing horribly out of the norm. And then Dolores’ voice and personality really started to come through and I knew there was a storm brewing. Dolores was a hard character to completely understand. A lot of her decisions were made out of anger and because of horrible communication skills. As she began to grow and mature it was easier to wrap your head around her situation because she was finally starting to understand herself, or so we thought.

                I thought Lamb did a great job with this extremely extended coming of age story. When I hear the phrase, coming of age, which a lot of people consider this novel to be, I think of teenage years going into adulthood. This novel followed Dolores’ life from four years old, well into her thirties. It explored so many different phases a person may go through and how relationships can form or dissolve based on lies, anger, regret, and misunderstanding. By the end of this novel, I could see the amazing growth and revelations that the character had gone through and there was a certain level of respect I felt for Dolores that I didn’t expect. She made me angry at times, had me laughing at her ridiculousness at other points but in the end, I think she figured it out. But I’ll leave that to you decide if you pick up this book. I give this novel 4 out of 5 stars and would definitely recommend this rollercoaster as a good read. 

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