Book Club - Unbecoming with Joanne Fedler

June Book - Unbecoming by Joanne Fedler

The session will be hosted by the author and will include:

• Reading from the book
• Discussion on the content
• Author's insight and inspiration

Unbecoming

You can do one night, Jo reminds herself as she follows five women into the Australian bush. Where are they going to sleep? And pee?  Jo probably should have let her husband Frank know. Just in case. Because you never know what can happen in the wild. 

While on her three-month marriage-and-motherhood Sabbatical in the country, Jo bumps into an old friend Fiona who invites her on a 'sacred' silent walk to mark her 57th birthday - the first since her husband Ben died. The last thing Jo wants is to share anything about herself - these are Fiona's friends, not hers. And what's she going to say? That her young adult children have made life choices she doesn't understand? That she has no idea who she is anymore? That everything is falling apart - even her 'happy marriage' to Frank?  But the unexpected intrusion of a young backpacker into their secret location, unleashes powerful and conflicting emotions in each woman, provoking conversations and confidences that stray into the shadowlands of motherhood, the mysteries of midlife, the future of monogamy, and Mother Earth.  

Under the canopy of the open night sky, around a small, tended the fire, the women share wise counsel, spill their secrets and offer up their stories, each exposing corners of truth the others need to hear.   Unbecoming is a funny, heartbreaking, and provocative homage to the midlife unraveling as women on the brink of elderhood speak honestly about their lives and wonder what the hell to do with vaginas that are not ready to be put out to pasture just yet.

About the Author  

I wrote and illustrated my first story, Goodbye Kitchen when I was six.  It was thin on plot – Emily plans a picnic – that’s it – but with coconut-lime lollipops.  Words were my first friends.  They helped me bridge the void between my hard-of-hearing sister and my parents. Only I could understand her, so I lent her my words until speech and hearing therapy gave her language.  They let me stamp names on everything in the world – the tangible as well as the mysterious.  They whisked me up faraway trees and through the gates of magical chocolate factories.  When I was 14, my dad placed Dylan Thomas’s Under Milk Wood, a play for voices in my hands. It centered me like clay on a wheel. I knew all I wanted was to do that with words.  After a Master’s degree in law at Yale, I set up a not-for-profit advocacy center to end violence against women and helped draft new domestic violence legislation. When Hustler magazine made me ‘Asshole of the Month,’ for the racket I was making against violent pornography, I knew I’d shaken the misogyny tree. It’s still one of my grandest achievements.  I had babies and immigrated to Australia, where I finally finished my first novel, The Dreamcloth (2005). 

Unbecoming (2020) is my thirteenth book. Over the years, my books have sold over 750 000 copies internationally, and I’ve mentored hundreds of writers and aspiring authors.  I live in Sydney, close to a beach with a good man called Zed, our campervan, and cat Archie. Every day I read poetry, put words on the page, and swim in the ocean (through winter and on rainy days too). Someday I’ll have my own vegetable garden, an Australian sheepdog, and a colony of rescue cats.