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Dec 17, 2009

Colin rated it:

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here

13 comments like (64 people liked it)

Jul 02, 2010

Laura rated it:

I really, truly, honest-to-god am not exaggerating when I say this is one of the worst books I ever read while I was an adult. Lamb hasn't written an actual story so much as he's bound together a series of advice columns and chat show episodes dressed up in vague narrative form. The girl's father leaves! Then she gets raped by her mother's boyfriend! Then she gains weight! Then she loses weight! Then she hooks up with a bad boyfriend! Then some more bad things happen to her after that! And more More...

18 comments like (65 people liked it)

Oct 08, 2010

Tyler rated it:

I really didn't like this book. It was recommended to me as an example of a man that could write with a womens voice. Nope. I didn't buy it. I also didn't buy his understanding of growing up as a fat girl. So Poo on you Mr. Lamb.
Here is a review by someone named Colin who I don't know but I completely agree with:
"Yes. I hated this book. I read it about ten years ago, and it pissed me off. To this day I refer to it as "that goddamn whale book." What repelled me then is t More...

3 comments like (21 people liked it)

Dec 17, 2009

Danae rated it:

I want to start out by saying that I read *I know this much is true* by Wally Lamb and would rate it in my top 5 favorite books of all time, so this review shouldn't deter anyone from reading his work.
I read some of the other reviews before writing this and I was surprised at how many women were shocked that a man could write such a convincing woman's perspective.
I know MANY insightful, perceptive men who understand women, so I don't find it a stretch that a man can write with a woma More...

4 comments like (18 people liked it)

Sep 26, 2007

Kaili rated it:

This book sucked. A) What the hell does a MAN know about writing about a fat girl's life? NOTHING. Thus making whole book wrong. B) Obviously didn't research anything about the main character, places her in situations she would NOT be in at the weight prescribed. What did he actually ASK WOMEN what they weigh? Guess what moron, they LIE. A 200lb woman can still fit in a car, loser. I could go on forever. The only reason I even read this book was because I forgot a book on an airplane and was off More...

8 comments like (35 people liked it)

Dec 17, 2009

Logan rated it:

Dear Bob, please deliver me from anymore sanctimonious books about the struggles of forging an independent identity and moving on from traumatic events. They were really good and really touching the first, ummmm, 20-30 times I read them, but at this point it just feels like I'm reading retreads of the same old tired story. I've seen this movie. They gave Angelina the Oscar for it even though Winona deserved it more. But that is neither here nor there. Is the book well-written? Yes, it most More...

2 comments like (14 people liked it)

Feb 09, 2008

David rated it:

She’s Come Undone (Wally Lamb)

A week after finishing this book, I still have conflicting opinions. It’s hard to synthesize them into a coherent review, so I’m just going to summarize what I liked and disliked.

On the plus side:

Easy to read: The story is told as a first-person narrative by the main protagonist, Dolores. Though her actions can be exasperating to the point where you want to shake some sense into her, she is always engaging, keeping a sense of ( More...

3 comments like (16 people liked it)

Jul 15, 2008

Patrick rated it:

Update: I found an old review I wrote about this book for an online book club I used to be in. I clearly hated it. Here it is, more or less in its entirety.

To be blunt, I didn't like it. It's hard to know where to begin when explaining my dislike for 'She's Come Undone.' Wally Lamb, to be sure, wrote very...believably. I felt like it was a girl writing. However, the fact of the matter is that I'm a man, and I have no idea how a woman thinks. Therefore, I'm clearly not the best jud More...

4 comments like (16 people liked it)

Dec 17, 2009

Lauren rated it:

I'm going to be honest, I was quite young when I read this...maybe 15...but it was one of those stories that simply sticks in your brain. I hated it. With everything in me...nothing about this was uplifitng whatsoever and it ends with her bonding with a whale. oooh, amazing. Every turn of the page displayed yet something even more depressing until you were ready to scream...she was depressed and obsessive and fat and slightly lesbionic and trapped herself with a man whom she created really in he More...

2 comments like (9 people liked it)

Mar 24, 2008

Claire rated it:

I hate this book. Let me just get that out of the way first!

I also have to admit to having personal knowledge of the author - which in no way colors my opinion of this book. Mr. Lamb was a writing teacher at my high school in CT and actually helped me quite a bit in writing my college application essays. I got in to every school I applied for - even my reach school - and I am positive that the essay I wrote was the biggest tipping point. My essay was really good and it was wholly More...

2 comments like (20 people liked it)

Dec 16, 2009

Sammy rated it:

I have to wonder if any of Lamb's children were teenage girls while he was writing this novel. If not, then I'm sure his wife had her brain picked apart to help him write this novel. Why? Lamb so captures the teenage girl spirit in this book (or at least the spirit of a crushed and ruined teenage girl) that it's hard to believe this wasn't written by a woman.

Delores's story is moving and has something we can all relate to, especially those of us who have ever gone through a trauma More...

0 comments like (16 people liked it)

Dec 16, 2009

Molly rated it:

It's like the author went to a women's shelter and picked up a pamphlet on everything bad that can happen to women. Then he went home and wrote a book in which all of those things happen to the main character or one of her family members or friends. This is the worst book I have ever read, and I read The Castle of Otranto for an English class in college.

2 comments like (15 people liked it)

Dec 17, 2007

Liz rated it:

Let me put it this way: if this book were wine, it wouldn't even be Boone's Farm. 'Nuff said.

3 comments like (21 people liked it)

Dec 16, 2009

JO rated it:

Wally Lamb is one of my favorite writers. This particular book is written in a woman’s prospective. Her name is Dolores. It starts out when she was a child; explain in details the experiences she has with her parents. Then it goes on to reveal situations about her father, her mother’s mental health issues and how the main character deals with these issues. She deals with them by eating so excessively that she gains 260lbs as a young adult. She is a bitter and smart mouthed teen who doesn’t want More...

0 comments like (11 people liked it)

May 21, 2008

Julianna rated it:

I hated this book. I don't know how I managed to finish it. I have read some of the reviews where the readers were impressed with how well the male author relayed a story of a struggling woman. Are you kidding me? I found it insulting that this guy thinks that is how a woman would behave. Let me tell you something, I have gone through some hard times in my life, never did I find myself personifying a whale while sitting next to it watching it die. In my opinion, the story was about her des More...

2 comments like (11 people liked it)

Dec 16, 2009

suehyla rated it:

Although well-written, this is one of those books that I finished in a few short days because I refused to put the book down until something good happened to the main character...

Yeah. Good luck with that one.

1 comment like (8 people liked it)

Apr 26, 2008

Rachel rated it:

I'm amazed by how many people hated this book. I had mixed feelings about it. Yes, the characters and situations were godawful, and at times it was more than a little contrived. A lot of people on this forum said it was hard to believe that so many horrible things could happen to one person - that I don't think is true. I have known people who have had that many horrible things happen to them. But some of the situations were pretty far-fetched. But I remember finding this book utterly More...

6 comments like (14 people liked it)

Dec 27, 2007

Ruby rated it:

When I read this, which is a long time ago now, I was not impressed by his lesbian character. If I read it correctly, the subtext says lesbianism is a pathology to which fat women are particularly susceptible. And lesbians are predatory.

Is plot message? Perhaps not, but when a man writes from the perspective of a woman, am I out of line to look at the plot with a critical eye? He is neither female nor, necessarily, lesbian.

Could what he described happen? Sure. But it's m More...

2 comments like (6 people liked it)

Oct 06, 2007

Melissa rated it:

This is one of my all time favorite books. I just recently reread the book and fell in love all over again. It had been some time since I read the book and felt I should refresh my memory since I recommend it to so many.

She’s Come Undone is the story of a troubled teenage girl growing into a woman, her struggles and the ways in which she decides to cope with them. She puts on a tough exterior but inside is as soft as the marshmallows she finds comfort in.

Dolores is plagu More...

1 comment like (15 people liked it)

Aug 16, 2008

Travis rated it:

I don't understand how Wally Lamb was confused for a good author.

Is that too harsh? Okay, then I don't understand how Oprah could have hated us enough to unleash this painfully uninteresting, largely unlikeable character onto the mass-market shelves of greater America.

Is that still too harsh? Okay, then how about this: I read this when it was published back in '98, and still I feel compelled to write about how much I disliked it ten years later (and on my first day a More...

1 comment like (14 people liked it)

Nov 20, 2008

m.g. rated it:

dude, i feel like this is the middlesex for fat people. i know lots of people liked it, were moved by it--but i gotta say, i hated on it. i read it quick in a hotel room i was staying at for a conference, then left it in the bedside drawer, as useless to me as the bible. in a world where marginalized voices are so rarely heard or given space, why not go to the source? it's not that i don't believe that we can't write from perspectives that we don't occupy ourselves, it's just that it's all t More...

1 comment like (6 people liked it)

Nov 21, 2008

Kirsti rated it:

This caused more controversy than any book my book group read. Half the group loved it, half hated it. I thought it could have easily been 100 pages shorter while telling the same story, and the only character I liked was the bad guy. Also, the symbolism was like getting smacked in the head with a Louisville Slugger.

The HR director where I used to work saw me leaving my copy at the company lending library.

"Didn't you LOVE that book?" she swooned.

" More...

4 comments like (3 people liked it)

Dec 17, 2008

Raquel rated it:

As I've mentioned before, I hate weak characters. Even more, I hate weak characters with self-pity. This one was hard to swallow. Being obese does not give people the right to treat others like crap. And no one's life is easy, so that's not a good excuse for poor behavior either.

0 comments like (5 people liked it)

Oct 29, 2007

Lisa rated it:

Apparently, the popular opinion is that Wally Lamb can write from a woman's perspective like no one's business. I vehemently disagree. The entire 500 pages I was reading this, I was thinking, hmm I'm not sure I'd react like that, I wonder if I know anyone who would, hmm that seems a bit of a stretch, oh really? This book was depressing with no insight, cruelly funny in places, with a main character I felt like I should like just because her life is so rotten, but I couldn't like her because she More...

0 comments like (5 people liked it)

Dec 16, 2009

Christina rated it:

Wally Lamb does an excellent job of writing from the perspective of a woman... I guess, I'm a woman, and I don't work that way. Everything I have ever read from Lamb has been wonderfully written with a good storyline that I could connect to, but I hated She's Come Undone.

The slothfulness and blaming done in this was ridiculous; I hated the characters. I wanted to yell at these people to get their acts together. I suppose this was the point; the book was well written and the chara More...

0 comments like (3 people liked it)

May 04, 2008

Sally rated it:

There were some really great moments, written with startling and vivid clarity. But in general, men writing as teenage girls really creeps me out.
Actually, with very few exceptions, I refuse to read adult books written by adults with a child/adolescent protagonist. The worst is when they attempt to write from that perspective, in the first.

That said, I liked this book ok - I would never snatch it away from a dear friend to preserve their sanity and time. But I would reco More...

0 comments like (4 people liked it)

Oct 11, 2007

Ashley rated it:

i honestly couldn't tell you what i thought about this book. i'm not crazy about it, i'll tell you that much. i didn't know whether to hate Dolores or feel sorry for her. Like at times, I WANTED to feel sorry for her and sympathize for her but then she was a pretty nasty girl the way she treated some people and everything and the things that she did. I don't think because you have a hard life is really an excuse to be a bitch. I don't know. I thought it was going to be better the way people rave More...

5 comments like (4 people liked it)

Apr 18, 2011

Peter rated it:

Fat girl eats a lot of roast beef and throws up. Then she feels better.

Oh and its written by a man who is absolutely impecable at capturing the feminine adolescent bi-polar voice. Cause I know when I'm at the book store I'm like ok can you tell me where the Feminine adolescent bi-polar section is?.....

5 comments like (3 people liked it)

Sep 24, 2008

Kimberly rated it:

I read this book years ago, and I barely remember it, but I do remember that I didn't like it. At. All.

All I really remember is wondering why this book was worthy of so much hype and praise. I think my brain blocked out the rest.

1 comment like (8 people liked it)

Dec 15, 2008

Sarah rated it:

This book is beautiful, tragic and compelling. It's a well-written piece of fiction.
With that said, if you aren't clinically depressed by the time you start this book, just wait until you finish. The paperback is 465 pages of the life of a woman who has the most tragic life-altering experiences as she tries to pick herself back up again. I actually had to set this book down for a week because it was pretty intense. Things go badly, continue to go badly, and just when they start to pick More...

2 comments like (4 people liked it)