She’s Come Undone
Wally Lamb, 1992
A lonely Connecticut girl grows up amid family secrets, television dreams and bottomless wanting, narrating her life with raw, comic honesty. A girl's voice carries warmth, comic edge and raw hurt through family scenes, with memory and unease close behind.
Feels like tenderness, unease and hope. About family, memory and love.
Who it’s for
You may like it if you enjoy close family portraits, a plainspoken narrator and humor mixed into hard growing-up years. Its focus on secrets and bottomless wanting can make some stretches emotionally heavy rather than light.
Why read it
It gives you a raw, funny account of a girl making sense of family and want, and the 1992 debut still reads as an honest coming-of-age story.
A page from the book
The war between a father's absence and a mother's silence, told by a child.
I wanted my father to be at home laughing with Ma on Saturday afternoons, instead of with Mrs. Masicotte, who had yellowy white hair and a fat little body like Zahra’s. My father called Mrs. Masicotte by her first name, LuAnn; Ma called her, simply, “her.” “It’s her,” she’d tell Daddy whenever the telephone interrupted our dinner. Wally Lamb.Wally Lamb was teaching high-school English when his debut appeared in 1992; Oprah’s Book Club later turned it into a bestseller.
Books that feel like this
More by Wally Lamb
I Know This Much Is True
Wally Lamb, 1998
A twin brother's breakdown, a family's buried history, and one man's long climb toward forgiveness—told with the pace of a page-turner.
Where to get it
Some of these links earn us a small commission, at no cost to you. It keeps BookFeed free.
Questions readers ask
- Is She’s Come Undone for me?
- You may like it if you enjoy close family portraits, a plainspoken narrator and humor mixed into hard growing-up years. Its focus on secrets and bottomless wanting can make some stretches emotionally heavy rather than light.
- What is She’s Come Undone like?
- A girl's voice carries warmth, comic edge and raw hurt through family scenes, with memory and unease close behind. Feels like tenderness, unease and hope. About family, memory and love.
- What should I read after She’s Come Undone?
- If you liked She’s Come Undone, try The Names (Florence Knapp), The Red Tent (Anita Diamant) and It Ends with Us (Colleen Hoover).
A taste of the feed
What parents quietly pack away, and never mention afterward.
She suspects that, to be a good parent, she must pack away the mothering part of herself into a box and gently close the lid on it. She had not realised this is what would be required of her, had not seen it coming. And yet she will do so willingly. Would you lay down your life for your child? the world silently asks. Yes, she’s done this. But she hadn’t known there would be a second reckoning, where this would eventually mean laying down the arms of motherhood: caution, foreseeing, checking, reminding, nurturing, openly caring.
The Names · Florence Knapp
Time doesn't heal so much as hand you something to wear over the wound.
Maybe time didn’t heal wounds exactly, but it gave you a kind of armor, or a new perspective. A way to remember with a smile instead of a sob.
Night Road · Kristin Hannah
A place at the table, handed down whether or not you asked.
My father has asked me to be the fourth corner at the Joy Luck Club.
The Joy Luck Club · Amy Tan
Read pages from books like this, one at a time
Keep reading in the feed