Unbecoming by Rebecca Scherm
|
Scherm’s novel is always compelling and often chilling. It contains one of the most articulate passages about lying I’ve ever read:
Scherm’s characters give the good answer again and again, and in doing so, catch themselves in traps they can’t escape. Scherm raises the stakes of their lies with jewel heists and fraudulent paintings, secret marriages and betrayed husbands, yet the book never feels melodramatic. This is partly due to the clean prose and attention to everyday details: chipped nail polish, underwear balled up on the floor, the careful way a co-worker eats her omelets. Ultimately, however, the book avoids melodrama because Grace is so recognizable. We’ve all been Grace. We’ve all lied, given the good answer again and again, until we’ve backed ourselves into a corner.
In writing about lies, Rebecca Scherm has tapped into a powerful piece of honesty: if lying is shameful, it is also alluring. How many of us tell small lies to keep life simple? So often, lies grease the wheels of romantic and professional relationships—those little lies that become reflexive, almost addictive, and sometimes grow out of control. How many of us have told a lie with the secret hope that saying it aloud will make it true? Grace’s lies are frightening because the huge, life-altering falsehoods she constructs are, at base, expressions of deep longing. This recognition of self is what makes Unbecoming a compulsive, often terrifying, read. In writing a book about fraud, Scherm has created a deeply honest story. Smart and almost impossible to put down, Unbecoming should be read and read again. |
Emily Nagin is a graduate of the Helen Zell Writers' program. Her work has appeared in New Ohio Review and Main Street Rag. She is the recipient of a 2014 Hopwood Award in Short Fiction and a 2015 Delbanco Thesis Prize.
|