Book Club Pick: She's Come Undone

We're switching things up this month, reading something a little different. This is a bit of an older book, written back in 1997 I believe. It of course became a best seller when Oprah picked it for her book club.

"Mine is a story of craving: an unreliable account of lusts and troubles that began, somehow, in 1956 on the day our free television was delivered . . . "

Meet Dolores Price. She's 13, wise-mouthed but wounded, having bid her childhood goodbye. Beached like a whale in front of her bedroom TV, she spends the next few years nourishing herself with the Mallmomars, potato chips, and Pepsi her anxious mother supplies. When she finally rolls 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 really going belly up.

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. At once a fragile girl and a hard-edged cynic, so tough to love yet so inimitably lovable, Dolores is as poignantly real as our own imperfections. She's Come Undone includes a promise: you will never forget Dolores Price.

About the Author: Walter (Wally) Lamb was born in Norwich, Conn., in 1950. He attended the University of Connecticut, receiving a B.A. in 1972 and an M.A. in 1977; he also earned an M.F.A. from Vermont College in 1984.

Lamb has written numerous short stories, most notably "Astronauts", which received both the Pushcart Prize and the University of Missouri's William Peden Prize in 1990. He is also the author of the bestselling novels She's Come Undone and I Know This Much Is True.