Unbecoming

The title of this book could be Becoming, Then Unbecoming, Then Becoming Again (and Then Unbecoming Again). We meet Grace, the protagonist, as a young teenager growing up in a small town in Tennessee. She and her family have sort of abandoned each other; her mother has remarried and had twin sons, which has apparently left Grace rudderless. She fills her void by spending all of her time with her best friend–boyfriend, Riley Graham, whose family embraces Grace as the daughter they never had. Telling you that Grace eventually orchestrates a heist is not a spoiler; the book begins with 18-year-old Grace hiding out in Paris after her coconspirators, including Riley, are caught and imprisoned for her historic estate-robbery plan gone awry (it was never really a very good plan). Her first real thieving, though, is stealing into the Graham’s family. Sometimes Grace seems to yearn for their storybook family life, and at other times she covets their wealth. She continues to confuse love and possession throughout the book.

Why Grace is so disenfranchised from her family is never made entirely clear, or how she and Riley came to be lovers at age 14, or why at each fork in the road of her growing up she manages to make the wrong choices. These things just are. One of the most interesting aspects of the relationships among the characters is Grace’s first “becoming,” consciously chameleonlike, what she imagines Riley and his family want her to be, before the dynamic reverses and she comes to steer Riley (and his friends) into amoral territory that does not suit Riley’s essentially good-kid character. It is during this process that Grace “unbecomes,” in myriad ways.

The first half of the book (Scherm’s first novel) wanders a bit, much like Grace herself. This is aggravated in part by Scherm’s style of flashing back and forth and back again. As Grace (who by now has become Julie) hones her international jewel thief skills in Paris while waiting to see what becomes of the imprisoned boys, the plot thickens; Grace is more sharply defined, and the writing is sharper too. There are some wonderful turns of phrase: my favorite line in the whole book is, “This feeling was just too stupid to feel.” At the end of the book, although the great attention to jewelry restoration detail went on a bit long, I was eager to know what happens next. The ending practically begs for a sequel.

The characters are not particularly likeable (except for the hapless Graham parents), which is another play on the title word “unbecoming.” Most are unbecoming enough that I didn’t care much what happened to them. But a couple of them are truly interesting, with a bit of a twist at the end, and Grace is an unusual female bad guy.