Unbecoming is a novel featuring a possibly unreliable and rather unlikeable narrator named Grace. The story alternates between 24-year-old Grace in present-day Paris and Grace several years ago in Garland, Tennessee, where she grew up. A crime has been committed and a couple of Grace’s friends have gone to jail. What responsibility does Grace have for what happened? What is it that Grace really wants?
It seems that Grace has always wanted something else, something other than what life has given her, and she has a talent for deception. When her family moves to Garland in her childhood, she sees an opportunity to create a new image for herself, but it’s also in her childhood that she identifies herself as an incorrigible “bad apple”. While she pulls the occasional petty theft, her greatest deception is perpetrated against the well known and respectable Graham family. Their youngest son Riley is about a year older than Grace, and the two of them become friends and more. Grace essentially moves into the Graham household, and Mrs. Graham, whom Grace seems to genuinely admire, thinks of Grace as her adoptive daughter. Over the years, Grace sees herself as a member of the family, and this sense of belonging seems to be the glue that keeps her with Riley. Things get complicated when it becomes clear to Grace that while she itches to get away from Garland, Riley sees his future there. The attraction between Grace and Riley’s best friend Alls is another factor in the crime that will be committed and its fallout.
Scherm does a great job of exposing the disparity between social classes, showing how people can grow up side by side in the same small town and yet have completely different experiences of that life. Grace and Alls represent the “have-nots” of Garland; their families are either nobodies or known for their troubles, making it easy to marginalize them and cut off opportunities afforded as a matter of course toward people like Riley and his pal Greg. While the four are friends and live together, the world that is Garland looks very different for each. After an incident for which wealthy Greg bears responsibility but Alls takes the fall, Grace expresses her dismay to Riley. He downplays it and says they all take turns “getting the shit,” but Grace thinks,
It’s not like that for us…. People would forget about Riley’s mistakes and Greg’s mistakes because of their nice families in the background, but Grace and Alls didn’t have any backup. She didn’t know how to explain this to Riley.
Related to this theme of class consciousness is the theme of self-identity and reinvention. What can one do to counteract that lack of “backup,” of connections that will support one through bad times? At it’s core this novel is a consideration of identity and the reinvention of oneself, or, put another way, it’s about lying and deceiving other people. Grace is a master and the only people who can see that are fellow liars and deceivers. Grace thought that her connection to the Grahams would support her until something happens that shows her it might not. She then turns to her talents as an appraiser of art and later as an art restorer to manipulate objects and people to her advantage. She is not always successful, but Grace is independent, unsentimental, smart, and bold. This is not to say that she is admirable. You wouldn’t want her as a friend, and a part of me wished for her to get her comeuppance. Still, watching her learn and come back from mistakes, deal with problems as they arose, held my interest. In the end, she may have gotten what she deserved. If you liked Herman Koch’s The Dinner or Will Wiles’ Care of Wooden Floors, you might enjoy this novel.
