Published by David Fickling Books, 2015.<\/p>\n
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Reviewed by Katie Hodgkinson, Medical Student<\/p>\n
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![\"Unbecoming](\"https:\/\/blogs.bmj.com\/medical-humanities\/files\/2016\/02\/Unbecoming-jacketfront-211x300.jpg\")
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They say don\u2019t judge a book by its cover, but the cover of Unbecoming<\/em> is beautiful, and the story inside even more so. I\u2019m generally a bit wary of Jenny Downham as an author because I did not enjoy\u00a0Before I Die,<\/em> and when I read the blurb for her most recent work,\u00a0I wasn\u2019t intrigued. It sounded very stereotypical, and to be honest, just like every other young adult book out there.<\/p>\n How wrong I was.<\/p>\n Unbecoming <\/em>is a long, thoughtful book that covers three family stories, giving us three beautifully explained situations. The power behind such wonderful writing will make you think and question whether you\u2019ve really determined the extraordinary richness behind the lives of people you\u00a0might generally\u00a0consider entirely average.<\/p>\n The book follows the story of three characters: Katie, who\u2019s struggling with her sexuality, her mum Caroline, who\u2019s struggling with just about everything, and Katie’s\u00a0grandmother Mary, who has Alzheimer\u2019s and who has just lost her long term partner. Unlike most young adult books, Unbecoming<\/em> contains\u00a0an LGBT character without the need for the book to be entirely devoted to the issues of LGBT acceptance and romance. I thought Mary\u2019s story in particular was very\u00a0well crafted and it formed the bulk of why I liked Unbecoming<\/em> so much. The book\u00a0explains the thoughts and feelings of someone with progressive memory loss very effectively, and for this reason I\u2019d say that this book (or at least Mary\u2019s parts) is a must read for anyone working with the elderly.<\/p>\n At the start\u00a0of the book, Katie and Caroline barely know anything about Mary. We begin at the\u00a0same point that\u00a0many doctors might do\u00a0– seeing the grandmother\u00a0as\u00a0someone in need of care, but for whom we have no particular attachment. Mary is sent home with Caroline and Katie to a world unfamiliar to her. \u00a0As the story develops we learn more and more about Mary – how she struggled to raise Caroline, how her relationship with her sister and father shaped her, and how all of this\u00a0affects how she interacts with Katie. There are a lot of difficult topics involved, yet\u00a0this remains\u00a0an optimistic book.<\/p>\n At the beginning I thought that this was going to be a very long and tedious read\u00a0about some very commonplace issues. Katie starts off by talking about her life and it all sounds very much like a whiny blog post from a teenager about how hard her life was – but then a rich tapestry evolves. When you meet someone you just don\u2019t consider the ways that his\/her\u00a0life might interlink with those around them. This book demonstrates\u00a0just how wrong such\u00a0thinking can be. I\u2019ve never read anything that works so well in support of holistic care – although there are several problems that could be solved so easily, in context some solutions make no sense at all. You question the hospital’s decision to\u00a0send Mary home to\u00a0a daughter she\u2019s never known, and who has no idea how to cope with her mother. You wonder why on earth social services are so unhelpful to a family already struggling. The expectations placed on these three women by society are woven in and together seamlessly, showing you just how flawed these expectations\u00a0can be, especially when created by those who have no understanding of what the lives and challenges of those outwardly viewed as ‘normal’ might be.<\/p>\n Unlike most young adult books, the focus here is firmly placed on family relationships. Yes, there is romance in Katie\u2019s developing liaisons, but love doesn’t in the end\u00a0conquer all. It also isn\u2019t a typical \u2018issue\u2019 book that focuses exclusively on sexuality or dementia or learning difficulties or depression – it just presents the problems as part of everyday life, which makes them much more realistic. There was a real sense of the characters having a whole life, rather than the book merely\u00a0showing the progression of one aspect. There is supposedly a twist at the end, but I thought that this was\u00a0quite predictable and left a flat conclusion to an otherwise amazing book.<\/p>\n Unbecoming<\/em> covers several hard-hitting issues and on discussion you\u2019d assume they were too numerous to cover sensitively in one work. The book successfully shows us that an \u2018ordinary\u2019 person will go through many of these struggles in the course of their life, sometimes all at once, and that normally it just wouldn\u2019t be considered that anyone would be processing this much turmoil in their life at any one time. Divorce, learning difficulties, Alzheimer\u2019s, the changing views of society on single parent families, sexuality and grief – all of these are covered beautifully, giving us a real understanding of these three women and what makes them act in the way that they do.<\/p>\n The storytelling around Katie\u2019s sexuality is beautiful. Far from realising her orientation and everything being sorted as is so often depicted in the fictional world, we see that same sex relationships are just as, if not more complex than otherwise seen. There is none of the usual\u00a0\u2018you\u2019re gay I\u2019m gay therefore we\u2019re automatically in love with each other\u2019 trope that seems so prevalent in young adult fiction at the moment. The pressures on Katie are realistic and ones that\u00a0we can all relate to, and it\u2019s so interesting to read the views of Caroline and Mary on these issues.<\/p>\n