Having never previously read any of the titles in "Oprah's Book Club", I picked up She's Come Undone at a yard sale for 25 cents on a whim and with low expectations. After all, Oprah is the force behind making shows about re-decorating rooms acceptable reality television programming and we also have her to thank for Dr. Phil becoming a famous personality. It ain't easy to trust her judgment.
Low expectations are pretty much what is required for reading something like She's Come Undone because it never really surprises or rises above its familiar content. While the writing style sometimes generates the odd smirk, author Wally Lamb constructs a plot that seems cut from a checklist of serious "issues" and merely meanders from one to the next with each new chapter.
Dolores Price is the principal character, a tongue-in-cheek wisecracker who ages -- and grows -- before our very eyes. The novel begins with her as a young child, follows her through the aches of adolescence, and plants itself for her adulthood and how she incorporates her past traumas and turmoils into her psychological makeup. Dolores thinks a great many things but often speaks only a few of these aloud. This is in part perhaps what makes her a compelling character; we feel like we are leafing through one of her private journals ourselves.
The people in Dolores's life ebb and flow with very little subtlety. When characters come and go, we already suspect where the foreshadowing is taking us, be it in a positive or negative direction. When Dolores uses scathing remarks towards her parents, we suspect a come-uppance will manifest itself courtesy of fate's ironic finger-jab. When she forms a trust or kinship with other key characters, we sense a breach of that trust is not too far behind and more often than not, this is precisely what happens.
Unfortunately, instead of husking away a lot of padded situations and familiar character interactions, Lamb puts Dolores through every dramatic scenario in the "writer's obstacle handbook", including rape, drug use, divorce, separation, abortion, homosexuality, abuse, mental illness and back again. Eventually, we don't know if we're meant to sympathize with Dolores or roll our eyes at her constant, implausible misfortunes. To his credit though, Lamb's balanced approach to his neurotic protagonist makes the journey less grim than it probably could have been.
She's Come Undone also pays special attention not to ignore the cultural and societal norms of Dolores's surroundings as she matures. The end result becomes a sort of Bridget Jones's Diary meets Forest Gump, as offhanded pop references weigh in and are processed through the eyes of an obese outcast. These additions help make the novel a real page-turner, but alas the payoffs embedded within the story are weak and sometimes false. That people can relate to Dolores's plight is no doubt true, but few in the real world will believe, much less fall for, the whole kit and kaboodle.
