by Wally Lamb
A severely overweight child overcomes many tragedies and
rigors in her life as she grows up.
Reviewed by: Michael J. Griffin
About Michael J. Griffin
The thought that kept echoing through my head after I finished this book was
"A man really wrote this?" I found my female friends who had read it had the
same sentiments.
Lamb is able to plumb the female psyche as well as any woman, and it shows in
this novel about Dolores Price, a young woman who has uncontrollable
appetites for many things. The first thing is food, to help her escape the
reality of her abusive father who cheats on her mother every chance he gets,
and her mother is a weak-spined person who keeps bringing in horrible choices
of men.
While I was reading this, I kept looking for the bright side of the story,
but Price just has tribulation after tribulation that would have Job clucking
in sympathy. But like someone driving past a bad car accident, morbid
curiosity kept my interest. That and Lamb has Price's voice as one who is a
sympathetic character, despite her myriad flaws, and she has a brave front of
humor that allows people to look past a lot of other things.
The book chronicles Price's life through high school and college, where she
meets an assortment of motley characters and while the book has a somewhat
hokey ending, it still ends well, and I admit to becoming, as Mike Myers'
character on Saturday Night Live's Coffee Talk sketch, a little farklempt.
Although it was Oprah's Book Club that catapulted Lamb to the forefront, I
think that his book was strong enough to sell on its own merits. The thing
that really floored me was that it was his first novel. How a man was able to
connect everything so fluidly in his first attempt at writing about females
was astounding to me, as I'm still attempting to figure out that frontier. My
state of singleness attests to my floundering there, but having this book on
my shelves has helped a bit.
Click here to buy this book, or read more about it at Amazon.com: She's Come Undone
Copyright © by Michael J. Griffin, 2002
Reviewed by Michael J. Griffin:
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