She's Come Undone by Wally Lamb
	List Price:   $7.99 Unit Price:   $6.39 You Save:   $1.60 (20%) ISBN-10:   0671021001 ISBN-13:   9780671021009 Publisher:   Simon & Schuster; Pocket Category:   Young Adults Pub. Date:   June 1998 Pages:   480 Format:   Mass Market
Subjects
FICTION_GENERAL
Description/Notes
PeopleThere are at least two surprises in store for readers of Lamb's memorable debut novel. One is the author's sex. This male writes so convincingly in the voice of a female, tracing her life from 4 to 40, that you have to keep looking back at the jacket picture just to make sure. The second surprise is how such a string of trials and tribulations can add up to such a touchingly funny book... The New York TimesAn ambitious, often stirring and hilarious book. From Chapter 3 I was on the brown plaid sofa, watching TV and scotch-taping my bangs to my forehead because Jeanette said that kept them from drying frizzy. Across the room on the Barcalounger, my mother was having her nervous breakdown.Ma sat hunched over one of our fold-out TV trays, working constantly on a religious jigsaw puzzle without making any progress. She wore her knee socks and her quilted pink bathrobe, despite the early summer heat. She ate nothing but cubes of Kraft caramels. For two weeks, I had been reaching over and turning up the volume, trying as best I could to ignore the private curse words she'd begun chuckling to herself, trying not to see the litter of caramel cellophane that was accumulating around her chair in a kind of half circle.It wasn't that Ma hadn't put up a fight. In Daddy's absence, she'd repainted the downstairs hallway and exercised in front of the TV with Jack LaLanne and cried and kicked the lawn mower until it eventually started. Her efforts at going it alone led her back to Sunday Mass and through a succession of brief jobs: convalescent-home cook, bank teller, notions-department clerk at Mr. Big's discount store. When winter cold burst one of our pipes, Ma called and called until she located the random yellow-pages plumber who got out of bed to come fix it.But we'd done nothing about maintaining the pool the previous fall. Leaves had fluttered down onto the surface then sunk and rotted; by springtime, the pool water was brown soup.One morning in May, Ma went downstairs and found Petey dead at the bottom of his cage. 'Why me? Why always me?' she was still sobbing when I got home from school. She hadn't gone to work that day and didn't go the next day either. At the end of the week Mr. Big's called to say they were letting her go. By then she'd already begun living in her robe.It was Ma's hair that finally got to me. At school I sucked breath mints and carried a small bottle of Tussy deodorant in my purse for whenever I could get my hands on the lavatory pass. Ma's unwashed hair, matted and crazy, alarmed me enough to suspend the cold war against my father and contact directory assistance in Tenafly, New Jersey.It had been almost a year since my father's move to Tenafly where he'd opened a flower shop with his girlfriend, Donna.'Good afternoon, Garden of Eden,' Donna said. I had spoken to her only once before, phoning the day my parents' divorce became final to call her a whore. The two prevailing mysteries in my life were: what Donna looked like and why, exactly, my father had traded us for her.'May I speak to Tony,' I said icily. 'This is his daughter, Miss Dolores Price.'When my father got on, I cut through his nervous chitchat. 'It's Ma,' I said. 'She's acting funny.'He coughed, paused, coughed again. 'Funny how?' he asked.'You know. Funny peculiar.'Neither Donna nor I wished to live under the same roof, and neither the Nords nor my father would entertain my proposal that Jeanette and I live at our house for the summer and Mrs. Nord drive over with our meals and clean laundry. It was decided I would move to my grandmother's house on Pierce Street in Easterly, Rhode Island, until Ma got right again.On the one-hour drive to Grandma Holland's, I clutched my notebook filled with addresses of girls from whom I'd forced promises to write me regularly. Daddy kept sneaking nervous peeks at me and at the rearview mirror. Behind us, the U-Haul trailer wobbled and swayed frost side to side. In silence I waited impatiently for the tragic highway accident that would paralyze me but wrench both my parents back to their senses. I pictured the three of us back home on Bobolink Drive, Daddy pushing my wheelchair solemnly up the front walk, eternally grateful for my forgiveness. At the doorway, Ma would smile sadly, her hair as clean and lustrous as a Breck-shampoo girl's.Daddy didn't say much to Grandma. He deposited A selection of Oprah's Book Club! In his extraordinary coming-of-age odyssey, Wally Lamb invites readers to hitch a wild ride on a journey of love, pain, and renewal with the most heartbreakingly comical heroine to come along in years. Meet 13-year-old Delores Price. She's left her childhood behind, and spends her adolescence munching in front of the TV. When she orbits into young womanhood at 257 pounds, she is no stronger and life is no kinder. But this time she's determined to rise to the occasion and give herself one more chance before she really goes under. A 'New York Times' Notable Book of the Year; a 'People' Magazine Top 10 Book of the Year; A 'Los Angeles Times' Book Award Finalist for Best First Novel of the Year. In this extraordinary coming-of-age odyssey, Wally Lamb invites us to hitch a wild ride on a journey of love, pain, and renewal with the most heartbreakingly comical heroine to come along in years.Meet Dolores Price. She's 13, wise-mouthed but wounded, having bid her childhood goodbye. Stranded in front of her bedroom TV, she spends the next few years nourishing herself with the Mallomars, potato chips, and Pepsi her anxious mother supplies. When she finally orbits into young womanhood at 257 pounds, Dolores is no stronger and life is no kinder. But this time she's determined to rise to the occasion and give herself one more chance before shereallygoes under. GlamourA heroine to cheer for....This supremely touching journey to adulthood may remind you ofThe World According to Garpand other sagas of emotional liberation.