If you're ever in a bookstore and start browsing through "She's Come Undone" by Wally Lamb and you make it past the first four pages, here's some free advice: Give up browsing and just buy the book.
Once the story grips you, it doesn't let go until the last chapter where you'll learn, among other things, that the title was the name of a song before it was the title of this book.
But first things first.
"She's Come Undone," is basically the life story of main character Dolores Price. This, in itself, is not saying much.
But it's the events in the story and Lamb's unique and often quirky portrait of his character that add fizz to what would otherwise be just another trite coming-of-age narrative.
Like Forrest Gump, Dolores tramps from the humdrum '50s to the yuppie '80s --- but her problem isn't IQ, it's weight.
The chain of events starts when Dolores' parents get divorced. Shortly afterward, her mother has a breakdown and goes off to a mental hospital for a time while Dolores lives with her grandmother.
Here she loses any innocence she had left, turns inward and begins her metamorphosis into a couch potato.
However, her troubles have barely begun, for barely a year after her mother returns, Dolores is raped by her grandmother's tenant,on whom she has a crush.
By the time her mother dies in an accident, Dolores is 250 pounds and has just about given up on everything but her favorite shows. Nor do the troubles end when she finally decides to go to college....
The litany of woes and disasters would quickly get boring(not to mention unbelievable) were it not for the fact that Lamb makes the tale just compelling and intriguing enough to hold our attention till the end.
Thankfully, Dolores is not the stereotypical victim whining for our compassion; few people would sit through 400 pages of psychobabble.
Instead, Lamb has made her a cynic and a fighter -- a person who has down times and up times, who muddles through life like so many people do and happens to makes it interesting when she's not making a mess of it.
Most intriguing of all, he actually manages to make her odyssey both touching and funny at the same time, and this is what saves it from being a thesis on the trials of obesity.
Most people, even if they have never had a weight problem (or killed their friend's goldfish, or drawn Van Gogh's "Starry Night" on an Etch-A-Sketch) can relate to some aspect of Dolores' life --- it's so saturated with reference points that it's hard to say where Dolores stops being Dolores and becomes Everywoman.
This, though appealing, may be the book's only weakness --- the fact that at times Lamb seems to go to such great lengths to make Dolores' experience universal that her character is obscured behind the common stereotype. Nonetheless, "She's Come Undone" makes smooth reading and is an interesting portrait of a life that, give or take a few major mishaps, could almost be yours.
If you're tempted to look at the ending to see how it all pans out, don't bother.
The old 'either happily-ever after or tragic ending' cliche doesn't work in this case. There's only one way to take this book -- one page at a time.
Enjoy.
