{"id":182,"date":"2020-10-29T10:45:48","date_gmt":"2020-10-29T10:45:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.qub.ac.uk\/dementiafiction\/?p=182"},"modified":"2020-10-29T10:46:05","modified_gmt":"2020-10-29T10:46:05","slug":"unbecoming-by-jenny-downham","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.qub.ac.uk\/dementiafiction\/2020\/10\/29\/unbecoming-by-jenny-downham\/","title":{"rendered":"&#8220;Unbecoming&#8221; by Jenny Downham"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Jenny Downham\u2019s Young Adult novel about three generations of women has received rave reviews and I can absolutely see why.\u00a0<em>Unbecoming\u00a0<\/em>is a gripping read from the very first sentence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>\u201cIt was like an alien had landed. Really, it was that weird.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Seventeen year old Katie\u2019s estranged grandma comes crashing into her life in dramatic fashion. Mary has been left alone and in need of care after her partner dies suddenly. Katie knows nothing about the woman who abandoned her mother as a baby and can\u2019t understand why her mum seems so reluctant to welcome this intriguing, imaginative older lady into their home when she\u2019s so obviously in need of help. Katie\u2019s mum has her own reasons to distrust Mary, besides her family is already quite complicated: Katie\u2019s father has moved in with his girlfriend, whilst her younger brother Chris has complex, special needs. Katie herself is having a turbulent summer. Her relationship with her mother comes under strain as she begins to embrace her identity as a lesbian and experiences her first romance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Mary brings fun, excitement and stories about the past into Katie\u2019s life. She brightens up Katie\u2019s dreary family life as together they work on piecing together the older woman\u2019s memories. But Mary isn\u2019t always easy to live with. Her Dementia means she requires constant care. Sometimes she remembers the past in short, lucid bursts. Sometimes she doesn\u2019t know where she is or how to manage the simplest tasks.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>\u201cEvery morning I think I can do things, and by the afternoon it turns out I can\u2019t.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Mary\u2019s Dementia is at the stage where she understands that something\u2019s gone wrong but doesn\u2019t know how to fix it. She\u2019s prone to wander away from home and sometimes has outbursts. She\u2019s desperate to be reconciled with her daughter and her grandchildren but her scattergun attempts at explaining the past and her own mistakes often lead to more upset.&nbsp;<em>Unbecoming&nbsp;<\/em>is a novel which questions the very idea of truth. If Mary remembers things one way and her daughter remembers the same incidents differently, who\u2019s to say which version is right and whether the confusion associated with Dementia renders the person remembering less reliable or more inclined to speak the truth without considering the consequence?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>\u201cMary had her version of the time she came to stay and Mum had hers\u2026All the threads bind and twist together. And every time you look it\u2019s different, because stories change in the telling.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This is an incredibly readable novel. I flew through its almost 450 pages. It explores a whole range of themes -intergenerational relationships, LGBTQ, feminist and mental health issues, alongside Dementia- through the central narrative arc of unpicking the complexities of Mary\u2019s life. The third person narration allows Downham to give us an overview of every character\u2019s perspective and also to dip frequently into the past. The writing is moving and eloquent and the ending, resolved enough to feel satisfactory, yet far from cheesy or forced. There are so many things I enjoyed about this novel but what I loved most is the honest, funny and occasionally irreverent relationship between Katie and her grandma. If anything,&nbsp;<em>Unbecoming<\/em>&nbsp;is a romance. It\u2019s the story of two women separated by a family rift, finding each other in the nick of time and very quickly falling in love.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Unbecoming was published by David Fickling Books in 2015&nbsp;<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Jenny Downham\u2019s Young Adult novel about three generations of women has received rave reviews and I can absolutely see why.\u00a0Unbecoming\u00a0is a gripping read from the very first sentence. \u201cIt was like an alien had landed. Really, it was that weird.\u201d Seventeen year old Katie\u2019s estranged grandma comes crashing into her life in dramatic fashion. Mary [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":901,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[15,5,10,6,13,12,14,11],"class_list":["post-182","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-reviews","tag-british","tag-carers","tag-elderly","tag-family","tag-lgbtq","tag-novel","tag-woman","tag-young-adult"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.qub.ac.uk\/dementiafiction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/182","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.qub.ac.uk\/dementiafiction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.qub.ac.uk\/dementiafiction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.qub.ac.uk\/dementiafiction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/901"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.qub.ac.uk\/dementiafiction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=182"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.qub.ac.uk\/dementiafiction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/182\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":185,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.qub.ac.uk\/dementiafiction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/182\/revisions\/185"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.qub.ac.uk\/dementiafiction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=182"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.qub.ac.uk\/dementiafiction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=182"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.qub.ac.uk\/dementiafiction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=182"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}