She's Come Undone

Rating:
Summary: not worth it
Review: i actually tried to give this book a chance. at first it was pretty good, but it all went down hill from there Delores was pretty depressing.

Rating:
Summary: Frustrating character, good read
Review: I think it's interesting to read the reviews of this book, because (leaving aside the people who hated it) no one can agree whether it was depressing or uplifting. I definitely thought the ending was Happy. Unrealistically so, maybe, but I felt gratified. There were also times when I wanted to kick Dolores for sabotaging herself every time things seemed about to go right, but I had a far-from-traumatic childhood and wouldn't presume to know how that might affect her psyche. So I just kept reading, because I didn't want to put it down! A minor point: I agree, Dante's transformation from perfect man to complete a--hole was hard to believe, even if you accept that she never really knew him to begin with. I also just need to point out that a reader several pages down on this list, although s/he loved the book, has gotten the heroine confused with Dolores Claiborne.

Rating:
Summary: An absolute "must-read"!!
Review: I didn't want this book to end but luckily I had "This Much Is True" to look forward to. It is amazing how Wally Lamb can tell the story from a woman's perspective. You will definitely fall in love with the main character "Dolores", and find yourself cheering for her throughout the story.

Rating:
Summary: HEART-CRUSHING SURVIVAL OF A WOMAN-WRITTEN BY A MAN?
Review: When a friend of mine told me that Dolores reminded her of me a little I thought, "Ok..guess I gotta pick it up, I'm going on vacation anyway." My goal was to get it down in one week. Amazingly so, we went on vacation in Cape Cod, during our travels to vacation we were going through the same town names as her..AT THE SAME TIME! I was reading about the Wellfleet incident when we were passing through Wellfleet. We even went on a whale watch when I was reading that part. It was eerie! But anyway I thought it was a good book, I understood her feelings exactly and was suprised by the fact that it was written by a Man! But I guess that goes to show we are all getting a little bit closer to understanding eachother. I thought for sure when she had the abortion that her luck would go really bad and Dante would get killed while skiing so that she wouldn't have anything..but I am glad to see the book didn't take that turn. I think the only thing I was disappointed in was the ending. I wasn't expecting fan-fare or anything, and I understood the symbolism, but I think that maybe a little more description should have gone into that part, so that the reader could *feel* the symbolism and close the book exhausted with feeling for a book well read. Make sense? Otherwise Wally- ya got a great thing going on there and I can't wait to pick up the next book!

Rating:
Summary: wonderful
Review: This book is a wonderful story. Dolores Price has the bad qualities that all of us keep hidden. I have read it twice, and each time I am amazed that a book can be so heartbreaking and so funny at the same time.

Rating:
Summary: Hard to start, then couldn't put it down.
Review: I loved this book, but not from the beginning. For whatever reason a back-cover review gushing about a male author's amazing ability to write in "a woman's voice," whatever that is, tends to put me off. Dolores Price's foul mouth put me off, and a few of her observations that decidedly didn't ring true --especially as a female's voice-- put me off. But gradually I was seduced by Dolores' persistence, stubbornness, vulnerability, skewed view on a warped life, and step-by-step moves to take some responsibility for her life and create a bit of happiness for herself. I came to love her sense of humor and sympathized with her sometimes stupid mistakes. She started out an oddity and became very sympathetic. She matured in a realistic way, learning to accept people the way they are; isnt' that one of life's challenges for all of us? I cried for the last several pages. I ended up loving the character and the book, but I was ambivalent about both for the first hundred pages or so.

Rating:
Summary: Wonderful and very touching.
Review: I loved this book and could not believe it was writte by a man. The entire I was reading it I could almost see Deloris Price in my mind. Very good and very believable, I did'nt want to put it down, and I did'nt till I was completly finished. I can't wait to read the next one.

Rating:
Summary: I couldn't wait to be finished with it
Review: So far I have only seen one bad review for this book; so here is another. It was too far-fetched. It was recommended by a friend with similar taste in books as mine. She finished it in 3 days she liked it so much. It had always looked like it might be good, so I thought I'd try it. I read it through to the end hoping it would get better, but it never seemed to. It was a complete waste of time. The main character was very hard to relate to, and her life was too unrealistic. This made it very hard to get pulled into the book enough to really enjoy it. All in all, don't waste your time, or money.

Rating:
Summary: Give it a couple of chapters!
Review: I got this book off the suggestion of a friend. It took me a week and half to get throught the first chapter. But then it only took me THREE DAYs to finish it. The book is crazy!! Made me feel a whole lot better about my life!!

Rating:
Summary: Skillful, but not engrossing
Review: When I chose to read She's Come Undone, I thought it would be interesting to read an author who had finally captured the isolation and obsession of being fat. Unfortunately, Dolores's attitude toward herself doesn't go beyond the schoolyard nastiness she gets from other people. And in the end, Mr. Lamb's book isn't very sympathetic or realistic--Dolores conveniently drops almost 140 pounds between one page and the next, when it's no longer useful to the plot to keep her fat. As Dolores herself would say, "Sheesh." More importantly, the book is full of plot devices and obvious "writerly" techniques that seem to get in the way of really knowing Dolores. I saw the end coming many pages before she did. The flat, matter-of-fact tone and relentless detail are mandatory in today's "serious" fiction, but they obscure the characters behind a curtain of song lyrics and brand names. Dolores's story deserved better than that.

This book is probably judged "realistic" and "moving" only by people who have never had any of Dolores's problems and never taken a writing workshop. To those who have, it's almost insulting.