Unbecoming

Unbecoming (2015)
by Rebecca Scherm

We all love a great heist story, right? You know how it goes - there's a group of quirky characters who get together to plan an audacious crime. Following a series of misadventures, a whole lot of close calls and at least a couple of car chases, everything culminates in an edge-of-your-seat account of the heist itself and the daring escape from the authorities. The characters are normally fairly straightforward and we don't overly dwell on the consequences of the theft, but it's fast-paced and action-packed and exciting. It's a winning formula.

You know, this kind of thing. Delightfully entertaining.

In her debut novel, Rebecca Scherm has taken the idea of an art heist novel and turned it completely on its head. In Unbecoming, Grace is a young American woman in Paris, where she has assumed a false identity after an attempted heist ended in the incarceration of her friends back in Tennessee. After three years in prison, Riley and Alls are about to be paroled and in rapidly escalating distress, Grace waits for them to find her and extract revenge for her betrayal.

The storyline of Unbecoming doesn't follow any kind of straightforward chronological order - instead there are multiple flashbacks to various points in time, which work to explore Grace's character, her relationships and the events both before and after the crime that have led her to her current covert and lonely life in Paris.
It's also revealed very early in the novel that there has been a failed robbery, that Grace was an integral part of it and that it has landed two of the thieves in prison - this means that the robbery itself is not a peak moment of suspense in Unbecoming (after all, we already know how it turns out). Instead, it's a more steadily paced, slow-building tension as more is revealed about the characters and their histories - and the reasons why Riley and Alls might be very, very angry with Grace.

Riley & Alls - presumably they're meant to be a bit more threatening-looking than this

Grace herself is a fascinating character - she is very honestly written as a dishonest, conniving liar who adapts her personality to fit different situations and manipulates those around her to get what she wants. Grace is always changing herself and adapting her identity in a process of "unbecoming" (see what I did there?). She is a deeply flawed, dishonest character and yet it's her unflinching honesty in explaining herself that makes her strangely likable.

Throughout the novel, Grace is drawn to art in all of its forms and Rebecca Scherm writes masterfully in describing Grace's fascination with various artworks and her work in Paris repairing and preserving beautiful objects (which may or may not be stolen). Grace's relationships with these objects are more honest and heartfelt than any of her relationships with people and  Rebecca Scherm's rich descriptions in these parts really add something quite lovely to the story.

Unbecoming is not a perfect read. The constant flash-backs and flash-forwards can be disorienting and a little jarring at times. Grace is a well-developed and unique character but most of the other characters (most notably the jailed Riley and Alls) are less interesting and their motivations less convincing. These are pretty minor complaints though and overall Unbecoming is an unusual, well-constructed novel and well worth reading.

7/10