She's Come Undone

She's Come Undone By Wally Lamb

She’s Come Undone follows the story of girl from when she is young all the way to her mid forties and details her life's tribulations as she eats her pain and her mother feeds her guilt until she balloons into an obese adolescent. She then struggles in school and allows herself to be victimized until through therapy and self healing, she becomes a strong woman.

Following Dolores Price through several decades was one of the most interesting reads I can remember. Although at times it was desperately heart-wrenching, I couldn't put it down. And not because I am sadistic, but because you had a feeling that she was going to pull through one way or another. The ending wasn't full of rainbows and cake, but neither is life. And that is what I really appreciate about what Lamb has done in this novel, he lets terrible things happen to Dolores, but in a very real, very sad way.

Things happen like this in real life, and people have to deal one way or another. And then he continues this all the way through the end; Dolores continues to have disappointments in her life but not without learning and growing from them. She knows that her life is not going to be a bowl full of cherries, but she come to terms with who she was and is finally empowered to shape who she has become.

During Dolores’s therapy sessions, she was able to understand and come to terms with the issues that she had with each of parents, as well as some of the terrible things that happened to her during her childhood. After she left the institution, I was surprised how much she was able to learn from herself and her new experiences. It was implied that maybe she left too soon and wouldn’t be able to cope. But instead, Dolores succeeded in re-entering life ready to be a new person. She struggled a bit in the beginning with some of her new relationships, but she continued packing away her life experiences in order to come out ahead as a better, stronger person than ever before.

I feel that her relationship with Dante brought out some of her worst, but ultimately her best. He tore her apart all over again and she started to allow him to control her-- but by the end of the book we can assume that it will be the last time she has anyone else but herself be in control.I would recommend this book to anyone who is looking for something other than light reading, but who is in search of a very good, well-written story. It is hard at times to get through, but at the end you feel that Dolores was a person worth getting to know.