She's Come Undone

3 Pages 857 Words

American Family

The book that I selected to read was She’s Come Undone, by Wally Lamb. This book relates to family in many aspects, but I feel that the most significant aspect in this book is the development of Dolores’ life from childhood to adulthood. We are drawn into her dysfunctional family life with vivid examples throughout the entire novel. Her parents’ divorce, her obesity, her mother’s death, and her marriage based on lies are just some of the cruel experiences Dolores endured. A story of sadness and pain unfolds before the audience, and yet courage prevails in the end, making Dolores the hero she would have never believed herself to be.
This story travels along the life of Dolores Price from the age of 4 to 40. We meet Dolores as the innocent, oblivious child of a dysfunctional family during the 1950’s. Her mother’s unfortunate miscarriage sets the mood of the whole novel as it causes her mother to go insane. The mother puts a great deal of stress on Dolores’ father, which causes him to cheat on her and causes that marriage to ultimately end in divorce. Dolores is then sent to live with her grandmother, who she has never gotten along with in her entire life. Throughout this time that she spent with her grandmother there was no relationship between the two. There was no communication or sense of family during this time. Her grandmother was too busy denying everyone’s sexuality and repressing her own grief over a long-dead son to offer much comfort to her disturbed daughter and her granddaughter who was falling apart.
Dolores begins to have an attraction to their next-door neighbor, Jack. Her attraction, vulnerability and low self-esteem lead to her being raped. Afraid to tell her grandmother about the incident, she confided in the tattoo artist across the street. This older woman knew that Dolores must tell her grandmother at once. When Dolores told her grandmother, Jack was forced to move out. After...