If You Like She's Come Undone by Wally Lamb ...

If you liked "She's Come Undone" by Wally Lamb, you may enjoy these titles:

Jemima J by Jane Green. Jemima is close to 100 pounds overweight -
treated shabbily by her roomates, passed over for promotions at work and
invisible to the man she loves. She decides to lose weight and change
her life. But will it be an improvement?

Something's Wrong With Your Scale by Van Whitfield. Sonny Walker gets
serious with Marsha - he is in loooove. Marsha can really cook and Sonny
packs on the pounds. He is devasted when Marsha gives him the boot - but
will he miss her, or her peanut butter cheesecake?

Smart vs. Pretty by Valerie Frankel. Are you the smart sister? Or the
pretty one? And do those labels fit as sisters grow into adulthood?

Almost any title from Oprah's Book Club list will feature people
overcoming horrible lives or suceeding in spite of the odds. From that
list, you might try:

Black and Blue by Anna Quindlen. Fran is on the run from the husband who
loves her - and beats her.

Ellen Foster by Kaye Gibbons. Ellen endures many horrible and abusive
relatives before finding a foster home where she might just fit in.

Here on Earth by Alice Hoffman. March Murray takes her daughter back to
her hometown and finds that maybe you can go home again.

You may also want to read The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold. You know
from the start that it doesn't have a happy ending - the narrator is a
young girl who has been abducted, raped and killed - but it is so
wonderfully written that it is hard to put down.

Meg Raymond 

Reference Librarian
_______________________________________________________

Posted - 12/28/2007 : 12:40:07 PM
 

Bastard Out of Carolina by Dorothy Allison "Greenville County, South Carolina, a wild, lush place, is home to the Boatwright family-rough-hewn men who drink hard and shoot up each other's trucks, and indomitable women who marry young and age all too quickly. At the heart of this astonishing novel is Ruth Anne Boatwright, known simply as Bone, a South Carolina bastard with an annotated birth certificate to tell the tale. Observing everything with the mercilessly keen eye of a child, Bone finds herself caught in a family triangle that will test the loyalty of her mother, Anney. Her stepfather, Daddy Glen, calls Bone "cold as death, mean as a snake, and twice as twisty," yet Anney needs Glen. At first gentle with Bone, Daddy Glen becomes steadily colder and more furious-until their final, harrowing encounter, from which there can be no turning back."-catalog summary

Weetzie Bat by Francesca Block (in YA fiction) "Weetzie and her friend Dirk have lots of fun, living in LA. Dirk and Weetzie and their dog, Slinkster Dog hang out, surf, and cruise in Dirk's '55 Pontiac, Jerry, but something is missing. Weetzie wants a love for Dirk, a Secret Agent Lover Man for herself, and house where they can live happily ever after. That's what life is about, isn't it?
"What does 'happily ever after' mean, anyway?" Weetzie asks Dirk. Good question, when life takes a turn to the weird, as it soon will for Weetzie and her friends."-Scott Phillips

Crazy in Alabama by Mark Childress
"Having murdered her redneck husband, Lucille drops her six kids off at her mother's and heads for Hollywood to audition for a part in The Beverly Hillbillies."-from Library Journal

Thirteen Reasons Why by Jay Asher
"When high school student Clay Jenkins receives a box in the mail containing thirteen cassette tapes recorded by his classmate Hannah, who committed suicide, he spends a bewildering and heartbreaking night crisscrossing their town, listening to Hannah's voice recounting the events leading up to her death."-catalog summary

The Worst Thing I've Done: a Novel by Ursula Hegi "Since early childhood, Annie, Jake, and Mason have had a special bond.
When Annie's parents die on the same night that she and Mason are married, the three friends decide to raise Annie's newborn sister, Opal, together. Annie struggles to be both a sister and a mother to Opal, a wife to Mason, and a friend to Jake. Not surprisingly, their relationships, already entangled, grow dangerous, too close, on the line. One fateful night the three friends miss the moment when they could still turn back, and they goad each other to step across the line, with shocking, unforeseen consequences."-book jacket summary

Walk Two Moons by Sharon Creech (in Juvenile fiction) "...Sal (Salamanca Tree Hiddle, that is) is traveling west with her grandparents after the sudden disappearance of Sal's mother. To pass the time, Sal tells her grandparents about her friend Phoebe, whose mother also vanished. The story within a story is well told, and Sal's gradual realization and acceptance of her mother's fate unfolds with tenderness and grace."-Caroline Parr

So B. It by Sarah Weeks (in YA fiction) "After spending her life with her mentally retarded mother and agora phobic neighbor, twelve-year-old Heidi sets out from Reno, Nevada, to New York to find out who she is."-catalog summary

Little Miss Strange: A Novel by Joanna Rose "A captivating portrait of the free-love, hippie world of Denver in the 1970s, brought to life in the pitch-perfect voice of an unforgettable heroine whose coming-of-age is at once delightfully idiosyncratic and touching universal."-catalog summary

The Coal Tattoo by Silas House
"Two sisters can't stand to live together, but can't bear to be apart.
One worships the flashy world of Nashville; the other is a devout Pentecostal. One falls into the lap of any man; the other is afraid to even date. One gets pregnant in a flash; the other desperately wants a child. At the heart of Silas House's third, masterful novel is the story of Easter and Anneth, left parentless as children, who must raise themselves and each other in their small coal-mining town."-catalog summary

When She Was Good by Norma Fox Mazer (in YA fiction) "This highly acclaimed novel from a Newbery Honor-winning author tells the heartbreaking and mesmerizing story of a teenager who suffers her father's alcoholic rages, her mother's silences, and the abuses of an older sister. Ultimately uplifting, this tale is a tribute to the resilience of the human spirit."-catalog summary

Mary M. Buck
Reference Librarian
Porter Branch