FICTION
“Unbecoming: A Novel”
by Rebecca Scherm
Viking, 320 pages, $27.95
In a basement salon in suburban Paris, a young American woman mends precious antiques, making repairs so subtle you can’t tell the teapot was ever cracked.
She can also switch the precious stones in your great-aunt’s brooch for paste, without dimming any of the sparkle.
She is a liar and a thief. And in 24 hours, two men she cheated are getting out of jail.
Welcome to the world of Grace, who only wanted to be a nice girl in the bosom of a nice family in Tennessee. How she ended up in Île de France with a dodgy passport and a bald spot drives Rebecca Scherm’s first novel.
It’s a heist story and could also be a blueprint for how to make a sociopath.
In tiny Garland, Tenn., Grace’s too-young parents split up and abandon her to various relatives for most of her childhood. When Grace is 9, her parents reunite, marry and have twin boys, who get the loving upbringing Grace never had. Is it any wonder she likes things more than people?
Then, at a middle-school dance, Riley Graham picks her as a partner and takes her home to meet his well-to-do family. They’re everything Grace has ever yearned for, especially Riley’s mom, who embraces Grace as the daughter she always wanted.
Once Grace has tasted the liquor of their love, she can’t — won’t — live without it. So she sets about cementing her place in their family, molding her appearance and behavior to fit right in.
The book hinges on that need, that compulsion, and Scherm paints a convincing, tragic beginning for a little girl who is cared for, but not about, by anyone, until the Grahams.
Grace goes away to New York City for college and has her eyes opened to a lot of things. Her most crushing discovery is that there are more options out there than your high school boyfriend and your teensy hometown.
That’s her trouble: What happens when, at 18, you realize you have shaped your entire life to get everything you wanted — when you were 12?
Flailing desperately to regain her psychological footing, Grace comes up with a plan, but she and Riley will need money. So Grace, drawing on a few weeks’ experience as an appraiser’s assistant, casts her eye on an antiques-crammed historical residence nearby.
What could possibly go wrong?
Scherm does a great job of building the story, which bounces between past Garland and present Paris, as she deconstructs Grace’s psyche. Grace is a great character. You’re not going to like her all the time, but you will absolutely need to find out how she ended up in Paris and what’s coming for her.
You can’t help but wonder: Not that every book needs a sequel, but if Grace could outgrow that Southern need to be nice and embrace her what’s-in-it-for-me essence, she could grow up to be the villain in an all-woman “Ocean’s Eleven.”
