Unbecoming

by Jenny Downham

Katie's life is falling apart: her best friend thinks she's a freak, her mother, Caroline, controls every aspect of her life, and her estranged grandmother, Mary, appears as if out of nowhere. Mary has dementia and needs lots of care, and when Katie starts putting together Mary's life story, secrets and lies are uncovered: Mary's illegitimate baby, her zest for life and freedom and men; the way she lived her life to the full yet suffered huge sacrifices along the way. As the relationship between Mary and Caroline is explored, Katie begins to understand her own mother's behavior, and from that insight, the terrors about her sexuality, her future, and her younger brother are all put into perspective.

• ISBN10: 0545907179
• ISBN13: 9780545907170
• Publish Date: 23 February 2016 (first published 3 September 2015)
• Publish Status: Out of Stock
• Publish Country: US
• Imprint: Scholastic US
• Format: Hardcover
• Pages: 384
• Language: English

Reviews

[Bianca]

A story is like a bolt of material or a woollen scarf, and you might pull out a thread and look at it boldly because there it is sitting in your palm. But there are countless threads tangled together and some belong to you and some belong to other people, and incoherence and inconsistency become part of the narrative. All the threads bind and twist together. And every time you look it’s different, because stories change in the retelling.

— A good read about how stories have many faces and how people twist their stories to make themselves seem like the 'good one.' I could've liked it more if it wasn't so slowwwwwwwwwwwww and kinda predictable at that.