She's Come Undone

Lamb, Wally. She's Come Undone. New York: Washington Square Press 1992. Print.

First Sentences:

In one of my earliest memories, my mother and I are on the front porch of our rented Carter Avenue house watching two deliverymen carry our brand-new television set up the steps. I'm excited because I've heard about but never seen television. The two men are wearing work clothes the same color as the box they're hefting between them. Like the crabs at Fisherman's Cove, they ascend the cement stairs sideways. Here's the undependable part: my visual memory stubbornly insists that these men are President Eisenhower and Vice President Nixon.


Description:

Wally Lamb's debut novel, She's Come Undone, follows Dolores Price, a challenging narrator to say the least, from age four until early adulthood. She has more than her share of obstacles in life, including a father who deserts her to start a new life and family elsewhere; a mother who plies her with sweets and junk and eventually is admitted to a mental institution; and a strict grandmother who ends up raising her. Dolores deals with her world cynically and judgmentally from the confines of her bedroom until her depressed eating brings her weight to over 270 pounds. Although she is accepted into a college, this is her mother's dream, not hers, and she is reluctant to attend.

 

She does meet and retain several acquaintances and eventually a husband who assists her mentally and later financially. But really she meets the world alone, on her terms, and confidently chooses her own pathways.

Sounds depressing, huh? Well, it can be. But honestly, you just have to pull for Dolores amid all her troubles, both those inflicted on her by circumstances as well as those she pursues willingly to disastrous ends. You just have to stick with her and see how she can find a way to pull herself into the woman she has inside her, buried under layers of cynicism, doubt, fear, and false confidence.

 

Lamb is a captivating writer, a master of inner stream-of-consciousness narration, dialogue, and insightful depictions of characters. He keeps you reading page after page to see what new dilemma or person will come into Dolores' life that she will have to examine (often superficially), judge (usually harshly), and react to (angrily). Lamb makes readers feel the conflicts, fears, and hope of Dolores with every situation she finds herself thrown into.

I was fully invested in Dolores and this book for its honest presentation of a young girl coming of age, trying to find herself, and confronting the world and people she faces. It's a modern re-imagining of The Catcher in the Rye, but with a female lead who reveals herself and her angst much more clearly and empathically, in my mind, that Holden Caulfield ever did. 

[P.S. For another great coming of age novel, please read one of my favorites, Brewster by Mark Slouka (see below)]

 

Happy reading. 

 

Fred

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If this book interests you, be sure to check out:

Slouka, Mike. Brewster.   

My favorite coming of age book with four remarkable, memorable characters who loosely bond together and battle against their personal struggles as teens. A fine successor to The Catcher in the Rye. (previously reviewed here)