Summaries and Customer Reviews are supplied by Amazon.com

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 she really goes under.

Average Customer Rating:

Read aloud & loved by all on a rainy camping trip	Customer Rating:
We went on a camping trip with a bunch of teenagers 16 & above and all it did was rain, so to pass the time, we took turns reading aloud, and just could not put this book down. You will not easily forget Delores, because she lives in many of us. You will not be disappointed with this book, we all loved it.

Very good book. Not happy, but good.	Customer Rating:
Definately not a "feel good" story but a good one. I like the way this writer writes and it's hard to believe this was written by a man. Wally Lamb is a man right?

great story, ok ending	Customer Rating:
Although I don't usually enjoy reading books, this one was really written well. It kept my attention and kept me wondering what was going to happen next. The only thing I wasn't too crazy about was how it ended. I invested a lot of my free time to read it and expected a better ending.

Well written, gripping, but horribly disturbing.

Customer Rating:

Here it is 2008 and I just realized this book is 16 years old. I picked it up this weekend at the grocery store pulled in by the #1 Best Seller across the top. While the book is very well written and I literally couldn't put it down, I was stunned at the content. After I finished it, I told my husband that every single thing I find morally abhorrent was contained in this book. 1. Adultery - throughout. 2. Physical abuse - her parents were physically abusive as was Dolores. 3. Rape. 4. Incest - her own father pinched her breasts as a pre-teen and asked about her "walnuts". 5. Theft. She steals her roommates mail and justifys it it in her own mind. 6. Self-mutilation - cutting, burning, and even attempted suicide. 7. Omitted so as not to offend. 8. Abortion. And subsequent infertility. But the two are not linked in the story. 9. Parenting w/o a father. The adult character pressed a college classmate to make a baby with her with the thoughtlessness and self-centeredness of a teenager. 10. Gluttony - Her weight and her obsession with television. 11. Verbal abuse - The hatred that spewed from this character was inconceivable to me. 12. Self-centered parenting - Her mother allows her to smoke in the 8th grade, she has a mouth like a sailor and mom doesn't seem to care, her father takes off, and her mom sleeps with everything in sight completely ignoring the fact that her daughter is in distress at 257 pounds. I guess what I find most disturbing about this book is that if read by teenage girls, it may give validation to all the things mentioned above. And those things mentioned above are eactly what has gone wrong with the morality of society. Whether anyone believes I'm closed minded or not, there is not one thing mentioned above that has benefitted society today in any single way. I'm sorry I wasted my money. And most of my used books go to the library, but not this one.

A quick read despite the 465 pages	Customer Rating:
The painful story of Dolores Price, a coming-of-age odyssey. Dolores is cynical and sarcastic and imminently lovable. We cheer for her at the same time that we are embarassed by her. An extremely quick read despite the 465 pages.